Alison Byerly
Department of English and American Literatures
Building 460 – Margaret Jacks Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2087
abyerly@stanford.edu
Current Position: Professor of English, Provost and Executive Vice President, Middlebury College (on leave 08-09); Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, 2008-09
Education:
Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania, 1989
M.A., English, University of Pennsylvania, 1984
B.A., with Honors in English, magna cum laude, Wellesley College, 1983
Book:
Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Paperback reissue, 2006.
Work in Progress.:
Book Ms. “Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism.”
Articles:
“’A Prodigious Map Beneath His Feet’: Virtual Travel and the Panoramic Perspective,” in Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 29, Numbers 2-3 (June/September 2007): 151-69.
“Accident or Murder?: Intentionality, the Picturesque, and the Body of Thomas De Quincey,” Nineteenth-Century Prose 29:2 (Fall 2002): 48-68.
"Rivers, Journeys, and the Construction of Place in Nineteenth-Century English Literature," in Steven Rosendale, ed., The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory, and the Environment. (Iowa University Press, 2002): 77-94.
"Effortless Art: The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Painting and Literature," Criticism 41, 3 (Summer 1999): 349-64.
"The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System," in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Harold Fromm and Cheryll Glotfelty. (University of Georgia Press, 1996).
"Cathy Johnson," in American Nature Writers, ed. John Elder, Vol. I (New York: Scribner's, 1996): 425-38; "Lewis Thomas," in American Nature Writers, ed. John Elder, Vol. II (New York: Scribner's, 1996): 919-931.
"'The Masquerade of Existence': Thackeray's Theatricality," Dickens Studies Annual 23: (1994): 259-86.
"From Schoolroom to Stage: Reading Aloud and the Domestication of Victorian Theater," in Culture and Education in Victorian England, ed. Patrick Scott and Pauline Fletcher (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1990): 125-41.
"'The Language of the Soul': George Eliot and Music," Nineteenth-Century Literature, June 1989: 1-17.
Book Reviews:
Review of Peter Brooks, Realist Vision (Yale UP, 2005), forthcoming in English Studies in Canada.
Review of Julia Thomas, Pictorial Victorians: Inscription of Values in Word and Image (Ohio UP, 2004), Victorian Studies 47.2 (Autumn 2005): 173-4.
Review of Delia da Sousa Correa, George Eliot, Music, and Victorian Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Victorian Studies 47.1 (Winter 2005).
Review of Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World (Chicago, 1998), Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 5 (1999): 182-4.
Review Forum on Realism, Representation, and the Arts: "Response to George Levine, James Heffernan, and Patricia O'Neill," Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 4 (1998): 148-50.
Conference Papers and Lectures:
“Signal Crossings: Railway Travel and Middle-Class Identity,” North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS), November, 2006
“Dickens and Virtual Travel,” Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference, Washington, D.C., December 2005
“Are We There Yet? Victorian Travel as Virtual Reality,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Conference, University of Virginia, September 2005
“’A Prodigious Map Beneath His Feet’: Air Travel, Virtual Travel, and the Panoramic Perspective,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference on “Nineteenth-Century Worlds: Local/Global,” London, July 2003
“Virtual Travel and Victorian Culture,” invited lecture, Oxford University, March 2003
"Travel and National Identity in Postcolonial England," GEMCS (Group for Early Modern Culture Studies) Conference, Dallas, October 1995
Chair, session on "Thackeray's London: The Imperial Culture of Vanity Fair," INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association) Conference, Santa Cruz, April 1995
"Women and Music in the Nineteenth-Century Novel," invited lecture, Vassar College, February 1995
"Displaced Heroines and Empty Parlors: The Traffic in Pianos in Nineteenth-Century Fiction," GEMCS (Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies), Rochester, November 1994
Chair, session on "Imperial Tastes: Women, Gender, and Food in the British Empire," Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Vassar College, June 1993
"The Uses of Landscape," MLA (Modern Language Association) Conference, San Francisco, December 1991
"The Aesthetic World of Branwell Bronte," Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, April 1991
"'Musical' Musicals and the Authenticity of the Self," Mid-Hudson MLA conference, March 1989
Professional Memberships and Associations
Modern Language Association
North American Victorian Studies Association
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
ACLS - Teagle Working Group on Liberal Education