Recent News
Education
Ph.D., Northwestern University
M.A., Northwestern University
B.A., Rutgers University
Scholarly Focus
- Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Publications
Manuscript in Progress
"The Musical Culture of Jane Austen" (with Miriam Hart)
Monographs
Women and Gift Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Richardson, Burney, Austen (New York: Routledge, 2016).
Men’s Work: Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Poetry, 1660-1784 (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Books Edited
The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England , ed. Linda Zionkowski and Cynthia Klekar (New York: Palgrave, 2009).
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture , vols. 37 & 38, ed. Linda Zionkowski and Downing Thomas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008-2009).
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture , vols. 35 & 36, ed. Jeffrey Ravel and Linda Zionkowski (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006-2007).
Articles, Essays, and Reviews
"'Is She Musical?': Players and Non-players in Austen's Fiction" (with Miriam Hart), in Art and Artifact in Austen's Novels , ed. Anna Battigelli (under consideration at University of Delaware Press).
"Austen, Music, and Manhood" (with Miriam Hart), in Austen and Masculinity , ed. Michael Kramp (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press), forthcoming.
"'Small, Trifling Presents': Giving and Receiving in Emma , Persuasions On-Line 37.1 (Winter 2016).
"'Aunt Jane began her day with music': Austen and the Female Amateur" (with Miriam Hart), Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 37 (2015): 165-85.
“Hard Times: Women Scholars and the Dynamics of Economic Recession,” Aphra Behn Online: An Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts , 1640-1830, (Fall 2012).
“ Emma and the Problem of Advice,” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 33 (2012): 223-37.
“Clarissa and the Hazards of the Gift,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction , 23.3 (2011): 471-94.
“The Nation, the Gift, and the Market in The Wanderer ,” in The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England , ed. Linda Zionkowski and Cynthia Klekar (New York: Palgrave, 2009)
“Celebrity Violence in the Careers of Savage, Pope and Johnson,” in Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850 , ed. Thomas Mole (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 168-85.
“Mother Gin, Motherhood, and the Problem of Domestic Order, Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Works, and Culture , 4 (2006): 1-26.
Review of The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity and Sexuality, 1650-1750 , by Raymond Stephanson, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 18 (2005): 153-55.
Review of Regulating Readers: Gender and Literary Criticism in the Eighteenth-Century Novel , by Ellen Gardiner, The Scriblerian 35 (Autumn 2002-Spring 2003): 59-60.
“Not ‘The Only Trifler in the Nation’: Pope and the Man of Leisure in the Dunciad ,” in More Solid Learning”: New Perspectives on Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, ed. Catherine Ingrassia and Claudia N. Thomas (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2000), 129-46.
“Gray, the Marketplace, and the Masculine Poet,” Criticism , 35 (1993): 589-608.
“Aesthetics, Copyright, and ‘The Goods of the Mind,’” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies , 15 (1992): 163-74.
“Bridging the Gulf Between: The Poet and the Audience in the Work of Gray,” English LiteraryHistory , 58 (1991): 331-50.
“Territorial Disputes in the Republic of Letters: Canon Formation and the Literary Profession,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation , 31 (1990): 3-22.
“Strategies of Containment: Stephen Duck, Ann Yearsley, and the Problem of Polite Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Life , 13 (1989): 91-108.
“Milton, Dryden, and the Eighteenth Century,” Review of John Dryden and His World , by James Anderson Winn, and Regaining Paradise: Milton and the Eighteenth Century , by Dustin Griffin, Milton Quarterly , 22 (1988): 133-36.
Courses Taught
- Writing & Rhetoric I 1510
- Introduction to Prose: Fiction & Nonfiction 2010
- Early British Literature 2980T (Honors Tutorial)
- Writing & Research in English Studies 3070J
- Restoration & Eighteenth-Century Literature 3130
- Law and Literature 3570
- Topics in English Studies 4600
- English Internship 4910
- Apprenticeship in Teaching Literature (Grad) 6190
- Eighteenth-Century Literature (Grad) 7190
Grants, Awards, Development
- 2014 Ohio University Faculty Fellowship Leave
- 2012 Outstanding Faculty Undergraduate Advising Award
- 2011-10 Academic Leadership Seminar
- 2010 Transformative Faculty Award
- 2005-06 Ohio University Faculty Fellowship Leave
- 2004-05 Honors Tutorial College Research Apprentice Award
- 2001 College of Arts and Sciences Course Reduction
- 2000 Department of English Course Reduction
- 1998 Department of English Research Assistant Grant
- 1996-97 Ohio University Faculty Fellowship Leave
- 1993-94 Honors Tutorial College Research Apprentice Award
- 1990 NEH Fellowship for Residence at the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies
- 1988-89 Ohio University Research Enhancement Award
- 1988 Ohio University Research Committee Grant
- 1985-86 Northwestern University Dissertation Year Fellowship
- 1985 Phalin Foundation Award
- 1985 Schuman Award
- 1982 Northwestern University President’s Fellowship
Conference Papers and Symposia
"Putting Burney in Her Place," Keynote Address delivered at the Burney Society/Aphra Behn Society Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, November 2017.
"Playing at Home: Austen and Domestic Music" (with Miriam Hart), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Minneapolis, MN, April 2017.
Organizer and Respondent, "Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces: Teaching the Eighteenth Century," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Minneapolis, MN, April 2017.
"'Small, Trifling Presents': Giving and Receiving in Emma ," Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Washington, DC, October 2016.
"All Roads Lead to Home: Shifting Scales in Austen's Fiction" (with Miriam Hart), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2016.
Organizer and Respondent, "Home Entertainment: Artistic Production and Domestic Life" (with Miriam Hart), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2016
"Markets and Models in Smith, Burney, and Austen," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Los Angeles, CA, March 2015.
Organizer and Respondent, "Debt and the Maiden: Women Writers and the Economics of Authorship," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Los Angeles, CA, March 2015.
"Hannah More's Missionary Women," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Williamsburg, VA, March 2014.
"Mentoring in the Profession," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Williamsburg, VA, March 2014.
Organizer and Respondent, "Women and Music: Composing, Performing, Listening," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Williamsburg, VA, March 2014.
"Music and the Mind in Austen's Fiction," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Cleveland, OH, March 2013.
"Women Don't Ask: Negotiating the Academic Career," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Cleveland, OH, March 2013.
Organizer and Respondent, "The Long Career of Frances Burney," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Cleveland, OH, March 2013.
“Women and the Gift in Austen’s Fiction,” Midwest Modern Language Association Conference, Cincinnati, OH, November 2012.
“‘Ever hear of stocks?’: Debating Social Exchange in Burney’s Cecilia , American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, San Antonio, TX, March 2012.
Roundtable speaker and organizer, “Hard Times: Women Scholars and the Dynamics of Economic Recession,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, San Antonio, TX, March 2012.
“Jane Austen’s Curious Economies,” 18 th and 19 th Century British Women Writers Conference, Columbus, OH, April 2011.
“Economies of Love in Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison , American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 2011.
Organizer, “Rethinking William and Mary,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 2011.
Organizer, “Concepts of Debt in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Sessions I & II), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 2010.
“Authority and the Gift in Clarissa ,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Richmond, VA, March 2009.
“Ask Austen,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Portland, OR, March 2008.
“In Want of a Wife: The Courtship Novel and the Problem of the Single Man,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA, March-April 2007.
Organizer, “Faith and Social Reform,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA, March-April 2007.
“Print Culture, Violence, and the Phenomenon of Richard Savage,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Montreal, CA, March-April 2006.
Organizer, “A Most Benevolent Age: The Theory and Practice of Charity” (Sessions I & II), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Montreal, CA, March-April 2006.
“Celebrity Violence,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Las Vegas, NV, March-April 2005.
Organizer, “Creating the Female Amateur (Sessions I & II), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Las Vegas, NV, March-April 2005.
“The Providence of those Ties” that Bind: Paternalism and Gift Exchange in Burney’s The Wanderer ,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Boston, MA, March 2004.
Organizer, “Narratives of Illness in Literature and Visual Art,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Boston, MA, March 2004.
Respondent, “‘Love’s Theatre’? The Problem with Beds in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Culture,” Midwest Conference on British Studies, Columbus, OH, October 2002.
“Mother Gin, Motherhood, and the Problem of Domestic Order,” Invited Speaker at the Johnson Society of the Central Region, Notre Dame, IN, May 2002.
“’I dare say she drinks’: Female Intemperance and the Crisis of Domesticity,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Colorado Springs, CO, April 2002.
“Married to the Job: Domestic Women and the (Mis)Conduct of Trade,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 2001.
Organizer, “Marital Strife, Separation, and Divorce in Eighteenth-Century France,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 2001.
Organizer and Respondent, “The Commercial Production of Fame,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Philadelphia, PA, April 2000.
“Consuming Anxieties: The Erotics of Commerce in Eighteenth-Century England,” Invited Speaker at the Roanoke College Literature Symposium, Salem, VA, November 1999.
Respondent, “Becoming Lewd and Becoming Notorious: Theoretical and Practical Implications of Work on Female Transgression,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Milwaukee, WI, March 1999.
Organizer, “Collaborative Writing: Literary Clubs and Coteries,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Milwaukee, WI, March 1999.
“Separate but Equal? Female Poets, Johnson’s Lives , and the Aesthetics of Literary Biography,” delivered at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Notre Dame, IN, April 1998.
“‘I also am a Man’: Johnson, the Victorians, and the Status of the Writer,” delivered at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Nashville, TN, April 1997.
“From the Stage to the Closet: Dryden’s Journey into Print, Manhood, and Poetic Authority,” Invited Speaker at the Notre Dame Eighteenth-Century Symposium, Notre Dame, IN, February 1996.
“‘I like the Excluded Prophet stand’: Aphra Behn and the Prophetic Tradition,” delivered (with Erika Pfleger) at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Tucson, AZ, April 1995.
“‘A good Poet is No Small Thing’: Pope and the Problem of Pleasure for Sale,” delivered at the Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Normal, IL, October 1994.
Organizer and Respondent, “‘Amazons of the Pen’: Women Writers and the Construction of Authorship,” presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference,” Providence, RI, April 1993.
“Gray and the Feminization of the English Lyric Poet,” delivered at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Seattle, WA, March 1992.
“A ‘Rich Inheritance of Love’: Motherhood and Patriarchy in Verses Addressed to Infants,” delivered at the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Wake Forest, NC, February 1992.
“‘Literary Vixens’: Women Writers and Poetic Theory in Eighteenth-Century England,” delivered at the North Central Women’s Studies Association Conference, Athens, OH, October 1991.
“No ‘Fetcher and Carrier of Singsong’: The Poetic Career of Thomas Gray,” delivered at the Modern Language Association Conference, Chicago, IL, December 1990.
“Bridging the Gulf Between: The Poet and the Audience in the Work of Gray,” delivered at the Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Macomb, IL, October 1990.
“Strategies of Containment: Ann Yearsley, Hannah More, and the Problem of Polite Culture,” delivered at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Minneapolis, MN, April 1990.
“‘Building a Monument’: The Making of Homer and the Making of Pope,” delivered at the Clark Library Workshop on Literary Property, Los Angeles, CA, January 1990.
“Territorial Disputes in the Republic of Letters,” delivered at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Knoxville, TN, April 1988.
“Dryden and Johnson: Economies of Literature,” delivered at the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Fayetteville, AR, March 1988.
“Protecting ‘The Goods of the Mind’: Originality and Literary Property,” delivered at the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Denton, TX, March 1987.
Editorial Positions
Editorial Board Member, Eighteenth-Century Poetry (2011-Present)
Editor, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2006-08, vols. 37 & 38)
Associate Editor, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2004-06, vols. 35 & 36)
Editorial Board Member, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2001-2004)
Editorial Reader: Broadview Press, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Life, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies , Literature and History , Philological Quarterly, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Journal of Intercultural Studies
Professional Memberships
- Modern Language Association
- American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Johnson Society of the Central Region
- Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
- Jane Austen Society of North America
- Burney Society
Administrative Service
Ohio University
Quarters to Semester Coordinator, Department of English, 2009-2010
Student Code of Conduct: Review and Standards Committee, 2002-2003
Review Committee for Honors Tutorial College Dean, 2000; 2004
Libraries Advisory Committee for Special Library Endowment Funds, 1993-94
Scholarship and Awards Committee, 1993
College of Arts & Sciences
Promotion and Tenure Review Committees, 1994-2012; 2017-present
Promotion Committee for Modern Languages, 1999; 2007; 2010-2012
Promotion Committee for Classics and World Religions, 2012
Faculty Development Committee, 1994- 96; 2006-2009
Research Advisory Committee, 2002-2005
Staffing Advisory Committee, 2000-2003
Curriculum Committee, 1997-98
Honors Tutorial College
Director of Studies, English Tutorial Program, 1999-2005
Honors Tutorial Council, 1999-2005
Department of English
Director of Graduate Studies, 2011-2014; 2017-present
Chair, Graduate Committee, 2011-2014; 2017-present
Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee (Literature), 2011-2014; 2017-present
Chair, Post-Doc Selection Committee, 2012-2014; 2017-present
Graduate Placement Committee, 2011-2014
Administrative Committee, 1993-96; 2004-2014; 2017-present
Promotion Committee A (to Full Professor), 2002-present
Promotion Committee B (to Associate Professor), 1993-present
Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2006-2011
Chair, Undergraduate Committee, 2006-2011
Undergraduate Placement Coordinator, 2006-2011
Chair, Tutorial Committee, 1999-2005
Departmental Honors Coordinator, 1999-2005
Governance Committee, 2003-2004
Chair, Long-Range Planning and Staffing Committee, 1996-1999
Budget and Ratings Committee, 1993-1996; 2015-present
Faculty Fellowship Advisory Committee, 1994-95; 2015-present
Graduate Committee (member), 1991-94
Undergraduate Committee (member), 1987-1991
Search Committees: Department Chair, British Romantic Literature/Women’s Studies, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature, Renaissance Drama, Group II and IV Positions
Director: 3 Doctoral Dissertations, 6 Master's Essays, 5 Departmental Honors/HTC Theses
Community
Advisory Board President, William V. Fisher Catholic High School, 2015-2016
Advisory Board Member and Vice-President, William V. Fisher Catholic High School, 2013-15