Joellen Masters
Master Lecturer, Humanities
Teaching Interests
British Literature, Victorian Literature and Culture, Women’s Studies and Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, Art History, Film and Film Theory, and Expository Composition
Research Interests
Victorian and New Woman Fiction
Selected Publications
Articles
“Haunted Gender in Rhoda Broughton’s Supernatural and Mystery Tales.” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory. 45.2 (Winter 2015): 220-250.
“‘Let herself out to do needlework’: Female Agency and the Workhouse of Gender in Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit,” Famine and Fashion: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Beth Harris. Burlington, Vt. and Hampshire: Ashgate Press (2005) 53-66.
“‘Nothing more’ and ‘Nothing definite’: First Wives in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters,” The Journal of Narrative Theory. 34.1 (Winter 2004): 1-26.
“‘A Great Part to Play’: Gender, Genre, and Literary Fame in George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife,” Victorian Literature and Culture 29.2 (2001): 285-301.
“‘Hemmed In’: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth and the Semiotics of Sewing,” Journal of the Association for the Interdisciplinary Study of the Arts 5.2 (2000): 135-147
Book Reviews
Women’s Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Melissa Edmundson Makala. Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. [2015: Winter 1.1]
Gertrude Käsebier: The Complexity of Light and Shade, eds. Stephen Petersen and Janis A. Tomlinson. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Woman Studies.
“Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America,” Hostetter Gallery, Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, Boston, February 28 – May 13, 2013 [2013: August 10].
New Woman Fiction, 1881-1899, Part 2, Vols. 4-6. General ed. Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Woman Studies. [2011: 3].
Dress Culture in Late Victorian Women’s Fiction: Literacy, Textiles, and Activism, Christine Bayles Kortsch. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Woman Studies. [2010/2011: 2(2)].
Becoming a Woman of Letters: Myths of Authorship and Facts of the Victorian Market. Linda H. Peterson. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Woman Studies. [2010: 2(1)].
Romantic Friendship in Victorian Literature. Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton. Dickens Quarterly. 25 (2008): 203-205. Fortune’s Wheel: Dickens and the Iconography of Women’s Time. Elizabeth A. Campbell. Victorian Studies. 46 (2004): 687-688.
Conference Presentations
“Redefining ‘The Glory of a Woman’: Short-Hair Heroinism in the Victorian Novel,” “Odd Bodies”: Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) Conference, Philadelphia, March 16-19, 2017.
“’Almost like a room in a Victorian novel’: Barbara Pym’s Refashioned Domestic,” 48th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Baltimore, March 23-26, 2017.
“Fashioning the Unconventional Victorian: Conduct, Costume, Coiffure,” 48th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Baltimore, March 23-26, 2017. Panel organizer and moderator.
“From the Experiential to the Expository: A Roundtable,” 47th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Hartford, CT., March 17-20, 2016. Roundtable Organizer and Chair.
“’Your Paranoia is Real’: The Death of the Amateur in Domestic Terrorism Films,” 47th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Hartford, CT., March 17-20, 2016.
“’Murderous-Headed Statues’: Domestic Violence and Murder in Little Dorrit,” 56th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Toronto, April 30-May 3, 2015.
“Running Toward Paradise: Neo-Noir’s Movement Away from the City,” 56th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA), Detroit, Michigan, November 13-16, 2014.
“’The Last Look’: Clairvoyance and Domestic Disintegration in Rhoda Broughton’s Supernatural Fiction,” 45th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 3-6, 2014.
“Apparitions and Illusions: The Spectral in the Victorian Cultural Imagination,” 45th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 3-6, 2014. Panel Organizer and Moderator.
“’The treasure house of science’: Sir Philip Sidney, Poetry, and Today’s Humanist,” Rethinking the Liberal Arts through Core Texts: Science, Poetry, Philosophy, and History, 19th Annual Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, Gatineau-Ottawa, Canada, April 22-April 25, 2013.
“‘Literary Fig-Leaves’ and ‘Masquerading Things’: Adornment in the Victorian Cultural Imagination,”44th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Boston, March 21-March 24, 2013.
“T.S. Eliot and Canon Formation: Tradition and Originality for Today’s Undergraduate,” Liberal Arts Education and the World: Inquiring into, Preparing for, and Living in the Real World through Core Texts, 18th Annual Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, Milwaukee, March 29-April 1, 2012.
“Worldly Experience and Superior Wisdom: Odd Women and Shades of Masculinity in Rhoda Broughton’s Twilight Stories,” Symposium – Haunted Men: Masculinity in the Ghost Stories of the Victorian and Edwardian Eras, Tremough Campus, University College Falmouth, Penryn, England, September 5, 2011.
“’A Balance of Culture and Fun’: Teaching the Great Texts via Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges,” The Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) 17th Annual Conference – The Quest for Excellence: Liberal Arts and Core Texts, New Haven, April 14-17, 2011.
“’My God! I have seen it!’: Specters and Subjectivity in Rhoda Broughton’s Fiction,” 52nd Annual Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) Conference, Chicago, November 4-7, 2010.
“Christina Light’s Interior Design: Corruption in Henry James’s House of Fiction,” 39th Annual NeMLA Conference, Buffalo, N.Y., April 10-13, 2008.
“Newspapers and the Common Reader in Thomas Hardy’s House of Fiction,” Print Culture and the Novel, Oxford University, Oxford, England, January 20, 2007.
“Affirmations of Identity and Experience: The Western Canon and Today’s Diversified Student Body,” Educating Heart and Mind: The Theory and Practice of Character Education, Two-Day Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character Academy, School of Education at Boston University, Boston, April 6-7, 2006.
“An ‘Abuse of Visibility’: What Maisie Knew, Henry James’s Victorian Novel,” The Twentieth Century and the Victorians, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, England, July 11-13, 2005.
“Adaptations/Rewritings in Literature,” The Twentieth Century and the Victorians. Panel Chair.
“A Sensational Control: The First Wife in Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne (1861),” Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Women Writers Conference, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, April 14th-17th, 2005.
“We all Scream for Ice Cream: The Semiotics of Food in Monster’s Ball,” Third Annual Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts,” University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, February 26-28, 2004.
“Politics, Pedagogy, and Great Books: Legitimizing the Western Canon for Today’s University Student,” Nashr-e Tari Keh Books, Tehran, Iran, July 8, 2003.
“Women of Letters: Letter-writing, Female Autonomy, and Authorship in Elizabeth Gaskell,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, November 8-10, 2002.
“‘Nothing more’ and ‘Nothing definite’: First Wives in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters,” Tenth Annual Conference on 18th- and 19th- Century British Women Writers, Madison, Wisc. April 19-21, 2002.
“Unsolved Mysteries: Statue Brides in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit,” Fourth Annual Dickens Society of America Conference, Boston University, Boston, November 5-7, 1999.
“Gender and the Semiotics of Sewing in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth,” Eighth Annual Conference on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers: Millennial Crossroads: Navigating the Future of Our Past, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, September 24-26, 1999.
“Fashion Fictions: Clothing Identities in Gaskell, Oliphant, and Braddon,” Eighth Annual Conference on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers. Panel moderator.
“Victorian States of Mind: Political, Ethical, and Philosophical Narratives,” 23rd Annual Meeting of the Midwest Victorian Studies Association, Chicago, April 23-24, 1999. Panel moderator.
“‘Hemmed In’: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth and the Semiotics of Sewing,” Fifth Annual Women’s Studies Conference: Women and Creativity, Marquette University, March 25-27, 1999.
“Defining Feminism at the Small Liberal Arts Women’s College,” 19th Annual Conference of the New England Women’s Studies Association, University of Connecticut, April 22, 1995. Coordinator and moderator of undergraduate roundtable presentation.
“Pornographic Serial Fiction: Refurbishing the Bourgeois Home,” 18th Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Victorian Studies Association, Rutgers University, April 24-26, 1992.
Other Professional Activity and/or Awards
Curran Fellowship, from the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, 2019
Co-Editor, The Latchkey: The Journal of New Woman Studies.
Dr. Ismail Sensel Award, Boston University, 2008.
Junior Fellow in the Boston University Humanities Foundation Society of Fellows, Boston University, 2005-2006.