About

I am an Associate Professor of English and Health Humanities at Holy Family University in Philadelphia, PA, where I teach Victorian literature, literature and medicine, and writing.

My research asks how cultural narratives about women’s emotional and physical lives have been constructed, transmitted, and contested, from the medical texts and novels of the nineteenth century to the self-help shelves and mental health discourse of today. I am interested in what happens when we read those narratives against each other. What can we learn about who gets diagnosed, believed, and to tell the story?

My book, Narratives of Women’s Health and Hysteria in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), works through the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, showing how hysteria discourse shaped, and was shaped by, the literary imagination. My articles have appeared in the Journal of Medical Humanities, Modern Language Studies, and Humanities.

My public writing extends this research into broader conversations. Under the heading, “The Fainting Couch,” I contribute essays to Psychology Today that welcome dialogue about women’s health, narrative, and mental health history beyond the university. I think of this writing not as supplementary to my academic work but as part of the same project, moving scholarship between the archive, the classroom, and the public sphere.

I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. from St. John’s University, an M.A.T. from Brown University, and a B.A. from Skidmore College. I live in Philadelphia with my family and English bulldog.