Frankenstein at 200

I ended up submitting the blog post I’d planned for here to the local paper, so you can read that version here: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2018/10/26/after-200-years-frankenstein-still-matters-opinion/1779830002/ Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of my favorite books to teach. Last fall I taught a course on the novel, and it’s a mainstay on my syllabi from the British survey to Romanticism to

Hans Christian Andersen’s Sexuality

My book about Disney’s Victorians includes a chapter about Hans Christian Andersen, locating him among other eminent Victorians (including Dickens, the Brownings, Eliot, and Yonge) and exploring the relationship between biography and adaptation. Among the most intriguing aspects of Andersen’s life, as nearly all biographers point out, is his sexuality, and this week I’m thinking about

Postcorporate Form; or, Art After Disney

With Comcast dropping its bid, The Walt Disney Company’s purchase of 21st Century Fox looks increasingly likely. Together those two companies account for about 47% of the domestic cinema market, and their merger would further flatten a media landscape dominated by a handful of companies. I’m currently working on a book about The Walt Disney Company’s adaptations