Contributor Biographies – Neo-Victorian Collins Special Issue

Jessica Cox

Kimberly Cox is Assistant Professor at Chadron State College where she teaches courses in British literature, composition, and Gender Studies. Her book, Touch, Sexuality, and Skin in British Literature, 1740–1900, is under contract with Routledge, and her articles have appeared in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Victorians: Journal of Culture and Literature, and Victorian Network.

Dr. Kathryne Ford is currently a researcher in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University, where she completed her PhD in 2019. Prior to moving to Australia, Kathryne studied English at the University of Memphis. Her research interests include narratology, life-writing, biofiction, and art, especially in relation to Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature and culture. Kathryne also manages the Australian Literary Studies academic journal, and she has previously published in the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies.

Dr Indu Ohri  is  currently  an  Assistant  Professor,  General  Faculty  at  the  University  of  Virginia.  She holds an  MA  from  Boston  University  and  a  PhD  in  English  from  the  University  of  Virginia.  She  is working  on  a  book  project  that  examines  how  the  ghosts  in  women’s  supernatural  fiction  reflect various  unspeakable  social  concerns  of  Victorian  Britain.  Her article examining  the  ways  in  which Amelia  Edwards’s  ghost  stories  offer  an  ecocritical  critique  of  Victorian  tourism  has  appeared  in the  Victorians  Institute  Journal  Digital  Annex  42.  Her essay arguing  that  the  late  Victorian  female occult  investigator  combines  the  opposing  disciplines  of  religion,  science,  and  occultism  by approaching  fictional  ghosts  with  compassion  is  forthcoming  in  Preternature.  Another article analyzing  Deborah  Noyes’s  neo-Victorian  rewriting  of  Edith  Wharton’s  ghost  story  “Kerfol” (1916)  as  the  young  adult  novel  The  Ghosts  of  Kerfol  (2008)  has  been  solicited  for  inclusion  in  a collection of essays edited by  Amy Montz  and  Dana  Lawrence.

Dr Claire O’Callaghan is a Lecturer in English at Loughborough. Her research interests include the lives and works of the Brontës, Sarah Waters, and the representation of gender and sexuality across neo-Victorian media. Claire is the author of Sarah Waters: Gender and Sexual Politics (2017) and Emily Brontë Reappraised (2018). Her work has appeared in Victorians: A Journal of Literature and Culture, Brontë Studies, Women: A Cultural Review, Victoriographies, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women’s Writing, and Neo-Victorian Studies.

Melissa Purdue is a Professor of English at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her current research focuses on late 19th-century supernatural fiction and her most recent article (in Revenant) was on Clemencre Housman’s The Were-Wolf. Other recent publications have been in Domestic Fiction in Australia and New Zealand (Pickering & Chatto 2014) and The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies. Purdue is also co-editor of the journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. She has recently taught classes on both “Neo-Victorian Fiction” and “Animals & Literature: The Victorians” which have sparked her interest in exploring further the portrayal of human-animal hybrids and mad scientists in Neo-Victorian literature.

Beth Sherman is a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She received an MFA in creative writing and an MA in English from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The James Joyce Quarterly, The Portland Review, Sou’wester, Newsday and Marathon Literary Review. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has written five mystery novels. 


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