Department of Women's Studies

Dr. Adams received his B.A. in Classics from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Washington in Seattle. His main research interests are Latin poetry, Roman topography and epigraphy, and Greek epic poetry. He has delivered numerous conference papers on these topics; his current research projects concern Lucan's Civil War. He teaches Women and Sexuality in Antiquity for the Women's Studies curriculum.

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

Susan Torrey Barber is an Associate Professor in the School of Film and Television, and has been teaching at LMU for twelve years. She received her doctorate at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinema-Television. Professor Barber is a film historian with areas of expertise in Australian, British, European and American film, including melodrama and the western. She is currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press on Australian Cinema, l970-present, and has received several university grants to study in Australia. Her essay on a contemporary Australian film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, recently appeared in the journal Film Quarterly. Professor Barber also wrote a chapter on the films of Stephen Frears in Fires were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism (Lester Friedman, Editor, University Minnesota Press). Professor Barber has given several papers at national film conferences, including the Society for Film Studies and Annual Film and Literature Conference (Florida State University). Topics include the films of Australian writer/director Jane Campion, "Australia's Dark Secrets in Sweetie, " and the American Western, "Women in the Wild West: Body Politics in Unforgiven and The Ballad of Little Jo." For several years, she was the keynote speaker for California Women in Higher Education at LMU. Public addresses include the following: "Revisiting Thelma and Louise," "Muriel's Wedding; An Australian Eccentric," and "Sexual Politics in The Full Monty."

Dionne Bennett holds a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of specialization include African-American urban anthropology and popular culture, criticalrace theory, feminist theory, and psychological anthropology. She is the author of Sepia Dreams: A Celebration of Black Achievement Through Words and Images and co-editor of Revolutions of the Mind: Cultural Studies in the African Diaspora Project 1996-2002.

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

Having grown up the son of a doctor and a nurse in a small pulp-and-paper producing town in Ontario, Canada, I studied philosophy at Queen's University, where I earned a Bachelor's and later a Master's degree. A year of non-academic work followed: I served as a counselor in an alcohol and chemical dependency clinic for adolescents in Thunder Bay. That year ended with a move, as my new spouse, Margaret Kurkjian, joined me for a "honeymoon" in the Bronx, New York, where I studied at Fordham University while she worked as an Occupational Therapist at New York Hospital. Though I had long since identified myself as a feminist on personal, political, and theological grounds, a course with Margaret Urban Walker at Fordham first awakened my interest in the philosophical presuppositions and consequences of feminist critique. These did not show up directly in my dissertation on the critical theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Juergen Habermas, but I began then to wonder whether my theoretical insights might have some practical implications for feminist epistemology. We arrived at Loyola Marymount University in 1994, where I began as a visiting assistant professor before moving into a tenure-track position; Margie took a post at the UCLA Medical Center. A faculty research grant enabled me to produce my first papers in feminist theory, and around the same time I realized that there would be no courses in feminist philosophy unless I began to teach them. Thankfully, both my Philosophy Department chair and Nancy Jabbra, the director of the Women's Studies program, were very receptive. Though I still sometimes wonder whether it's counterproductive to teach such courses as a man, I comfort myself with the following thought: feminism, and women's studies more generally, will only move from the fringe to the center when people begin to realize that the concerns we raise have universal significance.

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

Kam Dahlquist earned the B.A. in Biology from Pomona College and the Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. For her postdoctoral appointment at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at the University of California, San Francisco, she worked in the area of bioinformatics and genomics. Dr. Dahlquist was an Assistant Professor of Biology at Vassar College for two years before joining the LMU faculty in 2005, where she teaches courses and performs research in the areas of molecular biology, bioinformatics, and genomics. She believes that her research and teaching must be informed by and contribute to a broader social context. She has worked with various groups such as the UCSF Science and Health Education partnership and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) to improve science education for all and to increase the numbers of women and minorities in science. She believes strongly in training her students to apply ethical standards to the conduct of scientific research and to deciding which research projects are performed. She is also interested in feminist philosophies of science.

Karen Mary Davalos completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Yale University in 1993, and teaches in the Chicano/a Studies Department. Her work has been included in several anthologies and journals. Dr. Davalos's own book, Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora, maps political and aesthetic subjectivities in Mexican, Chicano, Mexican-American, and Mestizo art, so it is no wonder her consultation has been invaluable to a number of museum exhibitions. She has served as the Managing Editor of Voces, the journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, Chair of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), and currently serves on the Editorial Board of Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Dr. Davalos is also the recipient of a fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution. Her areas of specialization include race, ethnicity, gender; border, diaspora, mestizaje; nationalism and transnationalism; feminist anthropology, and U.S. third world feminisms. She teaches Chicanas and Other Latinas in the U.S.: Between Ethnography and Autobiography, and Chicanas and U.S. Third World Feminisms.

Jaqueline M. Dewar is a professor of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University. Her interests are in the preparation of K-12 mathematics teachers and in gender-related issues in mathematics. Dr. Dewar received her B.S. from St. Louis University in 1968, her M.S. in 1971 and her Ph.D. in 1973, both from USC. Dr. Dewar is the LMU campus coordinator of the Los Angeles Collaborative for Teacher Excellence (LACTE).

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

Dr. Edley received her B.A. and M.A. from Wake Forest University, and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University.

Professor Edley teaches classes in organizational communication, gender and the workplace, corporate ethics and social responsibility, and qualitative research methods. Her research interests include the intersections of power, gender, and identity in organizations, alternative forms of organizing, work-life balance, and women-owned businesses. She has published multiple book chapters and journal articles in such prestigious journals as Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Yearbook, Electronic Journal of Communication, Women and Language, Argumentation and Advocacy, etc. In addition, Dr. Edley is committed to issues of social justice and tries to blend activism with her teaching and scholarship. She has participated in local, regional, and national protests of sexist, racist, and greedy organizational practices.

Jennifer L. Eich, Ph.D. received her B.A. In Modern Languages (German and Spanish) at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois; her M.A. in Spanish at UCLA in 1987, and her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UCLA, specializing in Latin American Literatures. She specializes in colonial Spanish-American conventual writings, colonial Spanish-American narratives, Latin American women writers, and nineteenth-century and contemporary Mexican poetry and narratives.

Completing her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1990, Veronique Flambard-Weisbart teaches French in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at LMU. Incredibly active, Dr. Flambard-Weisbart is the Director of Pi Delta Phi, French Honor Society, Director of the European Studies Program, and has served as President of California Women in Higher Education at LMU. She specializes in contemporary French literary fiction, French cinema, cyberspace, global communication, and interdisciplinary and comparative studies. Dr. Flambard-Weisbart has published extensively on French Feminist Nathalie Sarraute, and her courses include French/Francophone Women Writers.

Originally from New Mexico, Deena Gonzalez completed her Ph.D. in History at UC Berkeley. She is the Chair of the Department of Chicano/a Studies. A well-published scholar, Dr. Gonzalez is author of Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880. Her recent articles and chapter contributions include "Chicana Identity Matters," "Malinche Triangulated, Historically Speaking," and "Not Honey or Money: Chicana Body Politics." Dr. Gonzalez has been the recipient of several fellowships, and was a historical consultant for the Emmy-award winning film, "The U.S.-Mexican War Series" for PBS. A Co-founder of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), she has also served on the editorial board of Signs and Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies. An often-requested speaker, Dr. Gonzalez is part of the U.S. Women’s History Oral History Project, contributing "Why Chicana History Matters." She teaches Chicana and Third World Feminisms.

Dr. Hammers received her B.S. from Boston University, her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Arizona State University. Dr. Hammers is a former lawyer whose graduate studies focused on rhetorical criticism, critical media studies, and social movement and public sphere studies. In addition to her training in rhetoric, Dr. Hammers is trained in qualitative research methods and utilizes field research and interviews in her ongoing study of the ways in which the female body is perceived and understood in various public and professional arenas. Dr. Hammers teaches research methods and directs senior thesis projects; she also teaches a course in the rhetoric of popular culture for the Women's Studies curriculum. Her scholarship includes analyses of The Vagina Monologues, Ally McBeal, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; her article critiquing the ways in which the television series Ally McBeal constructed images of female professionalism was published in 2005 in The Western Journal of Communication.

PProfessor Anna Harrison received her B.A. at Barnard College in 1986, her M.A. from Fordham University in 1994, and completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Religion at Columbia University in 2007, with an emphasis on the history of Christianity. She is the author of several articles on medieval religiosity. Professor Harrison’s interests include the history of female authorship and intellectual achievement as well as woman’s roles in fashioning Christian religious thought and practice. Professor Harrison is the author of several articles on medieval women’s monastic culture, including “‘Oh! What Treasure Is in This Book?’: Writing, Reading, and Community at the Monastery of Helfta,” in Viator 39.1 (2008), and co-written with Caroline Walker Bynum, “Gertrude, Gender, and the Composition of the Herald of Divine Love,” in Freiheit des Herzens: Mystik bei Gertrud von Helfta, ed. Michael Bangert, vol. 2 of Mystik und Mediävistik (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004). She is the recipient of a 2008 National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Stipend.

Dr. Kim received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, her M.A. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2000, and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2003. Her research focuses on questions of immigration, transnationality, "race"/ethnicity, gender and women's studies, intersectionality, global culture, and Asian/Asian American Studies.

Dr. Kim recently published her book, Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to L.A. (Stanford University Press, 2008). Drawing primarily on interviews and ethnography in Los Angeles, USA, and Seoul, South Korea, this book explores how immigrants acquire American ideas about "race," both pre- and post-migration, in light of U.S. military and cultural dominance over the home country. Her research has also appeared in Social Problems, Critical Sociology, and The Du Bois Review. In her next projects on second-generation Asian Americans and immigrant social movements, gender is also central to her analysis. She has also won awards for her conference presentations, been an American Sociological Association Minority Fellow, and a Social Science Research Council Summer Institute participant. She has also served in leadership roles in community organizations, has lived all around the world, and plays and enjoys music.

Barbara Lang completed her B.A. in sociology from Clark college, her M.A. in Social Work from Atlanta University, and received her Doctorate in Social Work at UCLA with her dissertation, Stress, Coping and Social Adjustment among Depressed Black Women. She has taught at LMU in the Afro-American Studies Department since 1984 and in the Women's Studies department since 1990. Her professional experience includes an extensive history with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, as well as in private clinical practice. She has also been a Senior Family Mediator for the L.A. Superior Court. Dr. Lang teaches Black Family Life, and Sex, Race and Violence.

Dr. Holli Levitsky received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She is a specialist in southern American Literature, Jewish American women writers, literary theory, and Holocaust literature, and held the 2001-2002 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Literature in Poland. She has published articles on William Faulkner, Cynthia Ozick, Sylvia Plath, Annie Dillard, Marge Piercy, Anne Frank, and others. Currently, she is completing two book projects: a study of the ambivalent ethnologies in William Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy and the edited final memoir of the Polish-Jewish writer Sara Nomberg-Przytyk.

Dr. Nina Maria Reich is a specialist in critical rhetorical theory. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies at California State University Long Beach, and completed her doctorate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Reich's research interests include rhetoric and public sphere theory, individual and group identities in relation to the "materiality" of social movements, and gender, communication, and culture. Her recent project, Queer Eye Fairy Tale: Changing the World one Manicure at a Time, which examined the rhetoric of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in relation to notions of citizenship, was published in Feminist and Media Studies in June, 2004.

Dr. Magnuson received his B.A. in Sociology and Philosophy from Brown University in Rhode Island before going on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles. His main areas of interest are gender studies, with a focus on men's roles; and media studies. He is working on a book manuscript entitled Changing Men, Transforming Culture: Hegemony and Interpretation Inside the Men's Movement. In 1997, he published "Ideological Conflict in American Political Culture: The Discourse of Civil Society and American National Narratives in American History Textbooks" in International Journal of Sociology and Public Policy. In 2001, he published, with Carl Boggs, "The Unabomber, Terrorism, and Anti-politics" in AMASS; and in 2005, he published "Cultural Discourse in Action: Interactional Dynamics and Symbolic Meaning" in Qualitative Sociology. He teaches Men and Masculinities in the Women's Studies curriculum.

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

A Bay Area native, Dr. Anna Muraco has received the B.A. in Communication from Santa Clara University, the M.A. in Sociology from San Jose State University, and the Ph.D. in Sociology with a special emphasis in Feminist Theory and Analysis from the University of California, Davis, with concentrations in friendship/family, aging and the life course, gender, sexualities, and social psychology. From 2004-06, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Applied Issues in Aging Program in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan. Since arriving at LMU, she has taught courses in introductory sociology, aging, family, and sexuality.

Dr. Muraco's current collaborative research focuses on older gay men and lesbians’ caregiving relationships and gay men’s life histories. Her book manuscript, Odd Couples, explores close friendships between gay men and straight women, and between lesbians and straight men. The manuscript, which is under contract with Duke University Press, examines the familial, gender, political, and sexuality dimensions of these close friendship bonds.

Dr. O'Healy also directs both the Humanities Program and the Rome Program. Her principal areas of research are Italian cinema, transnational film studies, and feminist theory. Her most recent publications include Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, edited with Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Imre (Palgrave 2007). She is currently co-editing a special issue of Feminist Media Studies on ‘Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference.’ Her book on the intersections of gender, sexuality and ethnic difference in contemporary Italian cinema is forthcoming from Indiana University Press.

Professor Oliver received her B.A. and M.A. from California State University at Los Angeles (CSULA). She has also taught Communication Studies courses at West Los Angeles College, Pierce College, California State University Northridge, and California State University Los Angeles. She regularly teaches Public Speaking; Interpersonal, Intercultural, and Gender Communication; and Rhetoric of Women. She also teaches Communication Behavior in Childhood, Rhetorical Discourse, Rhetoric of Popular Culture, and Health and Disability Communication, among others, and has overseen numerous Communication Practicum (internship) courses. For California State University, Los Angeles, School of Education, she has evaluated the communication skills of student teachers, taught Intercultural Communication in Urban Settings and mini-courses on mainstreaming children with disabilities into regular classrooms.

She was the first female chair of the Communication Arts Department (including what later became the School of Film and Television), LMU, and a former chair of the Communication Studies Department, LMU. She is a former President and Program Director of California Women in Higher Education, LMU chapter, and was named Woman of the Year by that chapter. She served as LMU’s first sexual harassment mediator, vice president of LMU’s Faculty Senate, first vice chair of the Academic Assembly, LMU facilitator for multicultural affairs, and as a member of LMU’s Racial Discrimination Mediation Panel, Intercultural Advisory Committee, and on the Committee on Faculty Committees. LMU students once voted her the University’s Teacher of the Year.

Professor Oliver’s research focuses on developing peer mentoring to facilitate learning and build communities, particularly among the underprivileged. Her research has taken her from religious communities in Northern California to villages in rural Namibia. In her long career, Professor Oliver has mentored countless students, student organizations, and faculty.

Kyra Pearson received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from The University of Iowa. She specializes in rhetoric and media studies, particularly 20th century rhetorics of U.S. feminisms. Her scholarship examines the relationship between citizenship and the body, and theorizes political mobility for those minoritized by ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender, and class. She enjoys teaching students how to think critically about mass media. She has written about the WNBA, women who kill, prostitution, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. When not listening to disco, punk, or 80s music, she is working on a book on the public depictions of U.S. feminism. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, earned her B.A. from UC Davis, and cherishes living near the sound of crashing waves.

Dr. Radler received her B.A. from the University of Lund (Sweden) in 1997, her M.A. from the University of Lund in 1997, and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2003. She researches theological and mystical developments from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. In particular, she focuses on the issues of mysticism, heresy, and women. She is currently completing a book on Meister Eckhart.

Dr. Reich earned a B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach, and completed her doctorate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Reich is a current Carnegie fellow of the prestigious California Campus Compact-Carnegie Foundation Faculty Fellows: Service-Learning for Political Engagement Program.

Dr. Reich teaches courses in rhetorical theory, rhetorical methods, rhetoric and social movements, visual communication, gender, and service-learning and politics. She is also the faculty advisor for Loyola Marymount University’s Center for Service and Action’s alternative break trip to Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico.

Dr. Reich’s research interests include critical rhetoric and public sphere theories, individual and group identities in relation to “the materiality” of social movements, and gender, communication, and culture. Her co-authored essay, “Queer Eye’s Critical Performances of Desire: Cultivating Queer Publics with an (Un)Civil Tongue was recently accepted for publication in Text and Performance Quarterly. She is also finalizing a manuscript analyzing a queer feminist re-visioning of la Virgen de Guadalupe in relation to the creation of a Chicana counterpublic. Stemming from her research and first-hand activist work in Mexico, Dr. Reich is concurrently working on several manuscripts for a larger book project examining the discursive and visual rhetorical strategies of the mothers of the murdered and disappeared women in their demands for justice from the State within the femicide in Juárez, Mexico.

Dr. Sager received her B.A. from U.C. San Diego, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Her research interests include religion, social movements, social policy, gender and sexuality, and the non-profit sector. She has recently published work from her dissertation on state level "faith-based" practices in The Sociology of Religion and The Journal of Church and State. She is especially interested in the intersection of religion and public life, particularly how religion impacts policy and politics. She is working on several research projects, including an overall examination of all state-level policies that are based on conservative religious principles, as well as a new project looking at the role of evangelicals within the Democratic Party. Her book manuscript based on her dissertation is under consideration at George University Press and Oxford University Press.

Dr. Sager has won several awards for her work, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religions' Graduate Student Paper award, and the 2007 Academy of Management's Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Non-Profit Sector. Additionally, she has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation, The Louisville Institute, The Horowitz Foundation, and the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Before moving to Los Angeles, she worked as the American Sociological Association's Congressional Fellow in Washington, D.C. She is continuing this work on public policy issues as a consultant to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services on a new study examining understandings of church/state separation by state government officials.

Dr. Steckenrider's research and teaching in Political Science are focused in the areas of gerontology and women. Her publications include a book, New Directions in Old Age Policies (SUNY Press) and articles in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, Southwest Journal of Aging, Encyclopedia of Aging, and Journal of Women and Politics. Dr.Steckenrider has been a Research Consultant to the National Council on Aging, a recipient of Administration on Aging grants and has served on the Boards of Directors of a hospital, a skilled nursing facility,and a municipal senior commission. She received her B.A. from the University of Illinois, her M.A. from the University of Notre Dame, and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She teaches Introduction to Political Science, Public Policies on Aging, Women and Politics, Political Socialization, Women and the Law, and Elderly and the Law.

Dr. Tiemeier received her B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1997, her M.A. at the University of Notre Dame in 1999, and her Ph.D. at Boston College in 2006. Her teaching and research interests include Hinduism, comparative theology, contemporary theological anthropologies and identity politics, Asian and Asian American theologies, feminist theologies, and post-colonial theory.

Robin R. Wang is also the Director of Asian and Pacific Studies. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Cardiff, United Kingdom, and Master's in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and Peking University, People's Republic of China. Her publications include Chinese Philosophy in an Era of Globalization (SUNY Press, 2004), Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qing Period to the Song Dynasty (Hackett, 2003), "Dong Zhongshu's Transformation of Yin/Yang Theory and Contesting of Gender Identity" (Philosophy East & West, 55:2, April, 2005) and "A Confucion Defense of Gender Equity" (co-authored with Kelly James Clark), American Academy of Religion, June 2004, Vol. 72. She is a board member for several international and national academic associations.

For more information about this faculty member, please consult the Department of History.

Dr. Wronsky received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1978, her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in 1981, and her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1986. She is the author of Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press); Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon), a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Award; The Love-talkers (Hollyridge Press); Again the Gemini are in the Orchard (New Poets Series); and Dogland (Alderman Press, University of Virginia). Her translation of Alicia Partnoy’s poems Volando Bajito has been published by Red Hen, and she is the coauthor with Molly Bendall of two books of “cowgirl” poetry: Calamity and Belle, A Cowgirl Correspondence and Dear Calamity, Love Belle. Blue Shadow Behind Everything Dazzling, a chapbook of poems about India where she lived for several months in 2006, is being published by Hollyridge Press in 2009.

Gail’s poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including Volt, Pool, Runes, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Antioch Review, Boston Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, Laurel Review, Crazyhorse, Burnside Review, Lafovea, and Pistola. Her work has also appeared in anthologies, including Poets Against War (Nation Books), The Poet’s Child (Copper Canyon), A Chorus for Peace (University of Iowa Press) and Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond.

She is the Director of Creative Writing and Syntext (Synthesizing Textualities) at LMU. She teaches Female Heroes in Shakespeare and looks forward to teaching classes in women’s poetry and feminist literature. She lives in Topanga, California.

Dr. Wu received her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Her dissertation was a study of female characters in Chinese supernatural tales. She joined LMU in 1992 and has taught courses on Asian literature and civilization, including "Women in Asian Literature and Asian Women Writers," and is planning a new course on Chinese Women in History which focuses on the period before the end of the imperial regime in 1911. Her publications include essays on The Song of a Faithful Wife and "The Lady Who Loved Insects." Her latest work can be found in Images of Chinese Women in Classical Chinese Writings: from the Zhou to the Song Dynasty, by Hackett Publishing Company, 2003.

Dr. Youngkin received her B.G.S. from the University of Dayton, her M.A. from Wright State University, and her Ph.D. from Ohio State University. She specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and teaches courses in Romantic and Victorian literature, as well as gender studies and narrative theory. Her first book, Feminist Realism at the Fin de Siècle: The Influence of the Late-Victorian Woman's Press on the Development of the Novel, examines the influence of feminist ideals in the debate over realism in the work of men and women authors writing in the 1890s. She also has just published an annotated edition of Sarah Grand’s Ideala (1888), which was one of the earliest New Woman novels and helped lay the foundation for the intellectually independent woman of the 1890s. She currently is working on a new book, which focuses on the relationship between art and literature in nineteenth-century women's writing. In her spare time, she likes to visit art museums, since doing so reminds her of her earlier aspiration to be an artist.