My research focuses on eighteenth-century and Romantic Britain’s print and manuscript cultures, especially upon the life writing and self-archival practices of the age. I have a longstanding interest in women’s literary histories and am especially drawn to the neglected study of older women’s manuscripts. My current research approaches these manuscripts from the perspective of legacy work in order to elucidate ‘eighteenth-century’ literary women’s self-aware creation of visual and textual archives. The project may accordingly cast new light on preservation, transmission, and mediation practices that raise larger issues related to the forgetting of women writers, periodization, and canonization.
Before joining the University of Chicago Department of English Language and Literature, I received my B.A. in English with Honours from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. At SFU, I worked as a research assistant at The Women’s Print History Project and served as the Lead Editor of Betty Schellenberg’s Manuscript Verse Miscellanies, 1700–1820.