About
Shalyn Claggett is an Associate Professor of English at Mississippi State University who researches and writes about Victorian literature, science, and visual culture. Education
Ph.D. Vanderbit University (2005)
M.A. Vanderbilt University (2001)
B.A. Truman State University (2000) Publications
Book:
Co-Editor of Strange
Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age (with Lara Karpenko), Michigan University Press, 2017.
Articles/Chapters:
“The Animal in the Machine: Punishment and Pleasure in Victorian Magic Lantern Shows.”
Nineteenth-Century Contexts 40.1 (2018). Forthcoming.
“Fiction over Fact: Narrative Ethics in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s
Eugene Aram.”
Journal of Narrative Theory 46.2 (2016):171-95 .
“The Human Problem.”
Narrative Theory Unbound: Queer and Feminist Interventions. Ed. Robyn Warhol and Susan S. Lanser. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2015. 353-60.
“Turning the Corner of Interpretation: A Response to Elena Anastasaki.”
Connotations: A Journal of Critical Debate. 21.1 (2012): 72-85.
http://www.connotations.de/pdf/articles/claggett02101.pdf.
“George Eliot’s Interrogation of Physiological Future Knowledge.”
Studies in English Literature51:4 (2011): 849-64.
“Victorian Pros and Poetry: Science as Literature in William Acton’s
Prostitution.”
Prose Studies33.1 (2011): 19-43.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440357.2011.568779#preview.
“Putting Character First: The Narrative Construction of Innate Identity in Phrenological Texts.”
Victorians Institute Journal 39 (2011): 103-26.
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.msstate.edu/ehost/pdfviewer
/pdfviewer?vid=3&hid=104&sid=b98f6d7b-f215-4f3a-8d4c-c2f6ec2ee5a5%40sessionmgr113
“Harriet Martineau’s Material Rebirth.”
Victorian Literature and Culture 38:1 (2010):53-73.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&
pdftype=1&fid=7281084&jid=VLC&volumeId=38&issueId=01&aid=7281076
“Narcissism and the Conditions of Self-Knowledge in ‘The Jolly Corner.’”
The Henry James Review 26.2 (2005): 189-200.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/henry_james_review/v026/26.2claggett.pdfProjects
I am currently completing a monograph titled “Equal Natures: The Science of Character in Victorian Women’s Writing,” which explores how notable women authors, including Harriet Martineau, Anne Brontë, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and George Eliot, addressed the implications of the popular nineteenth-century science of phrenology.
I am also beginning a project on Victorian magic lantern shows which examines the way in which this popular form of entertainment helped to create and shape a mass visual culture. Memberships
MLA, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS)
