Timothy L. Carens  

Associate Professor of English, College of Charleston

 

Office: English Department, 26 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424 • 843-953-5658

Home: 637 Gate Post Dr., Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464 • 843-881-7001 • carenst@cofc.edu

 




Degrees

 

Ph.D.        English, New York University, 1998.

M.A.         English, New York University, 1992.

A.B.         cum laude, History and Literature, Harvard College, 1987.


Employment

 

2004-present.    College of Charleston. Associate Professor.

1998-2004.        College of Charleston. Assistant Professor.

1993-1998.        New York University. Lecturer, Writing Instructor, Teaching Assistant.


Publications


Book


Outlandish English Subjects in the Victorian Domestic Novel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Essays in Refereed Journals and Volumes

“Breaking the Idol of the Marriage Plot in Yeast and Villette.” Forthcoming in Victorian Literature and Culture 38.2 (2010).

“Bleak House, Africa, and the Condition of England.” Approaches to Teaching Dickens’s Bleak House. Ed. John O. Jordan and Gordon Bigelow. New York: Modern Language Association, 2008. 38-44.

“Outlandish English Subjects in The Moonstone.” Reality’s Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins. Ed. Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003. 239-65.

“Colonial Male Authority in George Meredith’s Lord Ormont and His Aminta.” Studies in English Literature 41 (2001): 805-826.

“The Civilizing Mission at Home: Empire, Gender, and National Reform in Bleak House.” Dickens Studies Annual 26 (1998): 121-45.

“Restyling the Secret of the Opium Den in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Reading Wilde, Querying Spaces. New York: Fales Library, 1995. 45-55.


Reviews and Articles

Rev. of Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930, by Deborah Epstein Nord. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. (Fall 2008).

Rev. of Ethnicity and Cultural Authority from Arnold to Du Bois, by Daniel G. Williams. Victorian Studies 50.1 (Autumn 2007): 135-7.

“Mapping India.” Rev. of The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named, by John Keay, Indian Cartography: A Historical Perspective, by P. L. Madan, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, by Matthew H Edney, Framing “India”: the Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture, by Shankar Raman, Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing, by John Michael Archer, Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay, by Balachandra Rajan, Colonial Power, Colonial Texts: India in the Modern British Novel, by M. Keith Booker, Writing under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the British Colonial Imagination, 1830-1947, by Nancy L Paxton, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India 1883-1947, by Mary A Procida, En-gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives, by Sangeeta Ray, and Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity, by Ian Baucom. Victorian Literature and Culture 31.2 (Summer, 2003). 613-24.

“Royal Asiatic Society.” The Literature of Travel and Exploration. 3 vols. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. 3: 1032-3.

Rev. of Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, by Carole G Silver. Review 24 (2002): 165-72.

“Robert Louis Stevenson.” Multicultural Writers from Antiquity to 1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. 391-5.

Rev. of Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity, by Ian Baucom. Review 23 (2001): 79-85.


Conference Presentations 


“Idolatry and Novel Form in Kingsley and Brontë.” Victorians Institute, Columbia, SC. 4 Oct. 2008.


“Serpents in the Garden: English Professors in Contemporary American Films.” Teachers, Teaching, and the Movies, Charleston, SC. 26 Oct. 2007.


“Re-Invigorating the Imperial Race.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Selinsgrove, PA. 10 Mar. 2007.


“George Meredith’s Imperial Model of Patriarchal Reform.” Victorians Institute, Spartanburg, SC. 20 Oct. 2006.


“English Homes and Strange Relations.” Empire, Borderlands, & Border Cultures, Turlock, CA. 17 Mar. 2006.


“Irish Colonial Romance in Diana of the Crossways.” Irish Studies: Geographies and Genders, Columbia, SC. 25 Feb. 2006.


“Reviving the Geographic Epic of Colonial India.” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association, Austin. 11 Oct. 2003.


“A Slavish Misreading: The Bondwoman’s Narrative and Bleak House.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Baltimore. 16 Nov. 2002.


“The Uncanny Structure of Victorian Imperial Culture.” British Commonwealth and Post-Colonial Studies, Savannah. 23 Feb. 2002.


“The Juggernaut Rolls in England (II): Jane Eyre and Patriarchal Idolatry.” Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland NY. 28 Oct. 2001.


“The Juggernaut Rolls in England (I): Infectious Figures of Colonial Otherness.” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association, Los Angeles. 26 Oct. 2001.


“Wilkie Collins and the Mutinous Impulses of the Imperial Self.” British Commonwealth and Post-Colonial Studies, Savannah. 23 Feb. 2001.


“The Rotting Heart of Empire: The Late-Victorian Slum and Imperial Anxiety.” Interdisciplinary 19th-Century Studies, New Haven. 7 Apr. 2000.

 

“Civilizing the Rebellious Woman: An Imperial History of Male Authority in Lord Ormont and His Aminta.” International Association for the Study of Narrative, Hanover. 10 May 1999.


“Breaking Idols in England; Charles Kingsley’s Civilizing Mission in Yeast.” Middle-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, New York City. 24 Apr. 1999.


“In Darkest England: The Salvation Army and Imperial Waste Management.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Baltimore. 7 Apr. 1998.


“Detecting the ‘genuine foreign-grown savage’: Pursuing Imperial Oppositions in The Sign of Four.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston. 19 Apr. 1997.


“‘Hushing the impulse of fond idolatry’: Controlling the Native Passion in Villette.” British Women’s Writing/Political Discourse, Tulsa. 21 Mar. 1997.


“Dickens’s Imperial Hero at Home.” NMLA, Boston. 19 Apr. 1996.


“Revisiting the Opium Den in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Interdisciplinary 19th-Century Studies Association, Santa Cruz. 8 Apr. 1995.


“Colonies at Home and Abroad: National Priorities and Gendered Colonists in Bleak House.” British Commonwealth and Post-Colonial Studies, Statesville, GA. 22 Apr. 1994.


Grants, Fellowships, and Awards


Faculty Technology Institute. College of Charleston, spring 2008.

HSS Faculty Development grant. College of Charleston, December 2007.

Major Academic Year Support grant. College of Charleston, December 2007.

Summer Undergraduate Research with Faculty grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2006.

English Department Research and Development grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2006.

Center for Effective Teaching and Learning grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2006.

Faculty Technology Institute. College of Charleston, Summer 2005.

Summer Undergraduate Research grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2004.

English Department Research and Development grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2004.

Summer Undergraduate Research grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2003.

English Department Research and Development grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2003.

Center for Effective Teaching and Learning grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2003.

Faculty Research and Development grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2000.

English Department Research and Development grant. College of Charleston, Summer 2000.

Buckler Fellowship for Dissertation Research. NYU, 1996-7.

University Tuition Scholarships. NYU, 1990-3.

Dean’s Tuition Award, NYU. 1990-1.



Courses, Seminars, and Independent Studies


For Undergraduate and Graduate English Majors


British Novel II (English 328). Survey of Victorian novels.

The Brontës (English 399). Study of novels by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.

E. M. Forster (English 399). Study of the novels.

Gothic Literature (English 399). A study of gothic literature and its influence on the Victorian

novel.

The Hero in the Victorian Novel (English 699 and 701). A comparative study of types of the hero in

the Victorian novel.

Imperial Fantasies and Fears: Literature of the British Empire (English 395). A seminar on

  literature and topics reflecting the British imperial experience.

Late-Victorian Literature (English 399). A study of fin de siècle literary works and cultural

  preoccupations.

Literary Criticism (English 319). Theoretical analysis and practical application of major critical

approaches to literature from Plato to the present.

Major British Writers II (English 328). Sophomore survey of 19th- and 20th-century works.

Thomas Hardy and Victorian Anthropology (English 699). Study of novels in context of Victorian

  anthropology and conceptions of the primitive.

Victorian Children’s Literature (English 499). Survey of works by Sherwood, MacDonald,

  Kingsley, Christina Rossetti, Ruskin, Carroll, and others.

Victorian Novel (English 526). Graduate survey of Victorian novels.

Victorian Period (English 323). Survey of Victorian non-fiction prose, drama, and poetry in

thematic units.

Wordsworth (English 499). A study of the major works.


For Freshmen


Composition and Literature (English 101). Writing and research course based on cultural criticism

and analysis of short fiction.

Composition and Literature (English 102). Second-semester writing and research course based on

analysis of drama and poetry.

Honors English (Honors 105). Advanced writing and research course based on cultural criticism

and analysis of short fiction.

Honors English (Honors 106). Advanced second-semester writing and research course based on

analysis of drama and poetry.


Professional Service


Modern Language Association

Member and Compiler, Bibliography Committee of the Victorian Division


English Department, College of Charleston

  Academic advisor for English majors and incoming freshmen. 1998-present.

  ad hoc Workload Reduction Committee. 2000-1.

ad hoc Space Committee. 2008-9 (Chair).

  Assessment Committee. 1999-2001.

  Curriculum Committee. 1999-2000.

Faculty Advisor, English Club. 1999-2001.

  Graduate Committee. 2002-4.

  Honor’s Committee. 2005-8 (Chair).

Library Committee. 2002-3 (Chair), 2003-4.

Representative to Faculty Senate. 2002-4; 2008-9.

Research and Development Committee. 2000-1 (Chair), 2003-4 (Chair), 2005-6.

  Secretary. 2002-3.



College of Charleston

  ad hoc committee for Long Range Planning (Working Group 2). 2002-3.

  Honors Committee. 2003-4.

  Library Committee. 2002-3.

  Research and Development Committee. 2000-1, 2005-7 (Chair)

Faculty Advisor, Honor Board. 1999-2000.

  Undergraduate Research Advisory Liaison Committee. 2003-6.


New York University

  Graduate English Organization Coordinating Committee. 1995-7.

  Victorian Studies Group. 1994-8, 1995-6 (President).