My academic research interests include folk narrative (especially fairy tales and fairy legends), folkloric retellings in literature, the Gothic and Fantastic, supernatural folklore (especially conceptions of magic and fairylore/witch lore), feminist and queer theory, speculative literature, experimental literature, and digital media. I did my undergraduate work at Sarah Lawrence College, my MA work in Interdisciplinary Studies: Folklore at George Mason University, and earned my PhD in English with a concentration in Folklore and Nineteenth-Century British Literature at The Ohio State University. I also studied abroad at Oxford University: Christ Church and the National University of Ireland: Galway.
Academic Articles:
2019 – “Teaching with Stories: Empathy, “Relatability,” and the Fairy Tale” (co-written with Sara Cleto) – Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies – Vol. 33, Issue 1 (2019), pp. 102-115
2019 – “Porphyro is Dead: Exploring Narrative Ambiguity and Folk Intertexts in Keats’ “The Eve of Saint Agnes” (co-written with Sara Cleto) – Gramarye: The Journal of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction – Issue 15 (2019)
2016 – “I Am the Wolf: Queering “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Snow White and Rose Red” in the Television Show Once Upon a Time” – Humanities: Special Issue on Fairy Tale and its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture edited by Claudia Schwabe [online]
Reprinted by MDPI AG in book format as The Fairy Tale and Its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture edited by Claudia Schwabe (2016), pp. 98-113
2015 – “Beasts and Bluebeards: Reader Reception, the Fairy Tale, and Jane Eyre” (co-written with Sara Cleto) – Louise Pound: A Folklore and Literature Miscellany edited by Todd Richardson and Shelley Ingram (QRS and the Folklore and Literature Section of the American Folklore Society), pp. 8-14
Book Chapters:
2021 – “The Folklorist as Web Entrepreneur” (co-written with Sara Cleto) – What Folklorists Do: Professional Realities and Possibilities in Folklore Studies edited by Tim Lloyd (Indiana University Press), pp. 70-72
2021 – “Forms of the Marvelous” (co-written with Sara Cleto) – A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Modern Age edited by Andrew Teverson (Bloomsbury Academic), pp. 27-42
2018 – “The Fairy Tale and Digital Culture” – Fairy-Tale World edited by Andrew Teverson (Routledge Press, Routledge World Series, Francis and Taylor Group)
2018 – “YouTube and Internet Video” – The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures edited by Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (Routledge Press), pp. 642-648
2014 – “Molding Messages: Analyzing the Reworking of the “Sleeping Beauty” Fairy Tale in Grimms’ Fairy Tale Classics and Dollhouse” (co-written with Jeana Jorgensen) – Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television edited by Pauline Greenhill and Jill Rudy (Wayne State University Press Series in Fairy-Tale Studies), pp. 144-162
Speaking Engagements:
With Sara Cleto, as The Carterhaugh School, I have done lectures for the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, Profs & Pints, FaerieCon, The Folklore Podcast, Magickal Women, The Maryland Renaissance Festival, Readercon, and others
Selected Academic Awards:
2019 – The Dorothy Howard Folklore and Education Prize
Folklore and Education Section of the American Folklore Society
Awarded to “individuals and organizations whose work effectively encourages educators or students to use the study of folklore and folkloristic approaches in all educational environments”
Awarded for The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic
Co-winner with Sara Cleto
2017 – Dissertation Completion Fellowship
The Ohio State University English Department
Awarded to “an outstanding PhD student who has made significant progress in his or her dissertation, and whose dissertation shows exceptional scholarly promise”
2016 – Digital Media Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Work
The Digital Media Project and The Ohio State University English Department
Awarded for Facets, a multi-model collaborative webtext project
Co-winner with Erin Kathleen Bahl
2016 – Project Narrative Travel Award
Project Narrative: The Ohio State University
Awarded to attend the British Folklore Society’s Reflected Shadows: Folklore and the Gothic Conference in the UK
2014 – Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend
Women’s Section of the American Folklore Society
Awarded to “an emerging scholar who shows promise of furthering the study of women’s folklore, gender issues in folklore, and/or feminist approaches to the study of folklore”
2012 – The MAIS Department Award for Most Outstanding Thesis
George Mason University
Awarded for MA Thesis Entitled: “Dreams Within Dreams: The Sleeping Maiden Fairy Tales and the Gothic Aesthetic in Contemporary Retellings”
2012 – The MAIS Department Academic Excellence Award for Highest GPA
George Mason University
2010 – Elli Köngäs-Maranda Student Paper Prize
The Women’s Section of the American Folklore Society
Awarded For Paper Entitled: “Awake With New Dreams: Reconstructing Ideas of Sleeping and Waking in Feminist Contemporary Retellings of the Fairy Tale ‘Sleeping Beauty’”
2009 – New Folklore Student AFS Membership Award
George Mason University
Selected Courses Taught:
All Courses at The Carterhaugh School
“Folklore and the Fantastic from Nineteenth-Century to Contemporary Imagination”
“The Stories We Tell: Folk Narrative in the U.S. Experience”
Second-Year Composition: “U.S. Literature and the Fairy Tale”
First-Year Composition: “Adaptations of Traditional Narratives in Contemporary Culture”
For more academic information, please request my full C.V.