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Heather Nelson

Heather Nelson

Distinguished Scholar in English Literature

Education

Ph.D., Purdue University, English, 2015
M.A., Wake Forest University, English, 2005
B.A., Yale University, English, 2003

Biography

Employment (Selected)

  • Colorado State University-Pueblo, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, 2017-2018
  • Antioch College, Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature, 2015-2016

Courses Taught at Western

Fall 2022:

  • ENG 102–Academic Writing: American Short Stories
  • ENG 148–Film and Culture: Hitchcock’s Adaptations
  • ENG 250–Critical Approaches to Literature: Feminist Theory
  • ENG 493–Senior Seminar I: Jane Austen

Spring 2023:

  • ENG 102–Academic Writing: American Short Stories
  • ENG 250–Critical Approaches to Literature: Feminist Theory
  • ENG 371–Literary Theory and Criticism: Shakespeare
  • ENG 494–Senior Seminar II: Futures

Fall 2023:

  • ENG 103–Writing and Rhetoric II
  • ENG 370–Myth and Culture: Greco-Roman Literature
  • ENG 373–British Literature: Milton through the Romantics

Spring 2024:

  • ENG 103–Writing and Rhetoric II
  • ENG 358–Global Literatures: Marriage
  • ENG 463–Major British Authors: The Brontës and Gaskell

Fall 2024:

  • ENG 103–Writing and Rhetoric II
  • ENG 337–Women Writers: Feminist Utopias and Dystopias
  • ENG 374–British Literature: The Victorians to the Present Day

Spring 2025:

  • ENG 103–Writing and Rhetoric II
  • ENG 358–Global Literatures: Marriage
  • ENG 463–Major British Authors: Jane Austen

Publications

  • I Do?: Women, Consent, and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. University of Toronto Press, 2026 (advance contract).
  • Elizabeth Bennet’s Proposal Scenes and Nonconsensual Consent.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, no. 42, 2020, pp. 194-206.
  • “‘Nothing That She Could Allege Against Him in Judicious or Judicial Ears’: ‘Consensual’ Marital Abuse in Victorian Literature.” George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, vol. 69, no. 1, 2017, pp. 89-119.
  • “‘She Sins While She Remains Away’: Marital Consent, Restitution of Conjugal Rights, and Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Novels.” Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, no. 129, Spring 2016, pp. 98-111.
  • “‘When a Daughter Elopes to Gretna, Generally It Is a Wicked Thing’: Female Consent, Clandestine Marriage, and Susannah Frances Reynolds’s Gretna Green; Or, All for Love.ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 28, no. 2, April-June 2015, pp. 79-86.
  • “‘You Could Be Judas’: Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Black Slaveowner.Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, vol. 22, no. 1, Spring/Summer 2015, pp. 16-44.

Awards at Western

  • Men’s Basketball Team Faculty and Staff Appreciation Award, 2023 
  • Professional Activity Fund Awards, 2023-2024
  • Women’s Basketball Team Faculty and Staff Appreciation Award, 2023 
  • Wrestling Team Faculty and Staff Appreciation Award, 2022 

Service at Western

  • Co-Host, Contemporary Writer Series, Spring-Fall 2024
  • Founder and President, Women of Western, Spring 2023-present
  • Instructor, Women’s Basketball Team yoga, Fall 2024-present
  • Member, Career Champions Network, Fall 2023-Fall 2024
  • Member, Faculty Evaluation Committee, Summer 2024-present
  • Member, First-Year Writing Program Committee, Fall 2022-present
  • Member, Graduate Programs Committee, Fall 2022-present

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