James R. Simmons, Jr.
PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
George K. Anding Endowed Professorship in English, 2006- Present
PUBLICATIONS
Articles
“‘I have frequently...regretted the manner of her life’: Patrick
O’Brian’s Diana Villiers and Jane Austen’s Cousin, Eliza de Feuillide.”
Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
28 (Forthcoming May 2007).
"'Don't tell me about rears and vices; I have been in the Navy all my life': Profligacy on the High Seas in Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian." English Language Notes 43.2 (December 2005).
"Did Willoughby Join the Navy? Patrick O'Brian's Thirty-Year Homage to Jane Austen." Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 26 (May 2005).
"No Expectations at All: Women in Dickens' Great Expectations." Women in Literature: Evaluating Fiction for Gender Bias. Eds. Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen Sibler Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.
"Industrialization, the Proletariat, and Commodity Culture: The Victorian Industrial and 'Condition of England' Novel." The Blackwell Companion to the Victorian Novel. Eds. Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
"Class, Matriarchy, and Power: Contextualizing the Governess in Agnes Grey." New Approaches to the Art of Anne Brontë. Eds. Barbara Suess and Julie Nash. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2001.
"'Every Discernable Thing in It Was Covered in Dust and Mould': Radcliffe's Chateau-le-Blanc and Dickens's Satis House." The Dickensian 91.1 (Spring 1997).
"'In the Rank Sweat of an Enseamed Bed': Sexual Aberration and the Paradigmatic Screen Hamlets." Literature/Film Quarterly 25.2 (April 1997).
"A Curiosity Shop for the 1990s: A Kinder, Gentler Quilp." The Dickensian No. 436 Vol. 91(Summer 1995).
"'Small, Prim, and Quaker-Like': Reinventing Joanna Baillie as Jane Eyre." Brontë Society Transactions 21.4 (Winter 1994).
ReviewsReview of Clinton Machann's The Genre of Autobiography in Victorian Literature. Nineteenth -Century Prose 23.2 (Fall 1996).
"High Life Resurrected: The Reclamation of the Lost Brontë Saga." Review Essay on Christine Alexander's Charlotte Brontë's High Life in Verdopolis: A Story From the Glass Town Saga. Documentary Editing 18.4 (December 1996).Review of Muriel Spark's The Essence of the Brontës. Victorian Studies 38.2 (Winter 1995).
Non-Refereed Contributions to
Books
"Teaching Hamlet,
Film, and
Psychological Criticism." Instructor's Manual for Reading, Writing,
and
Literature, An Introduction. Ed. Steven Lynn. New York: Harper
Collins, 1999.
"Ellen Johnston." Victorian Women Poets.
Ed. William B. Thesing. (Detroit: Gale, 1998). Volume
199of The
Dictionary of Literary Biography.
"Robert Clark." American National Biography
(Oxford University Press, 1998).
"G.K. Chesterton." Encyclopedia of the Essay (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997).
"Harriet Martineau." Feminist Writers
(Detroit: St. James, 1996).
"Stanley J. Weyman." British Short Story Writers, 1880-1914: The Romantic Tradition. Ed. William F. Naufftus. (Detroit: Gale, 1995). Vol. 156 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography.
"Amelia Opie." British Writers of Short Fiction and Tales, 1790 - 1880. Ed. John Greenfield. (Detroit, Gale, 1995). Vol. 159 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography."The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas." The Reference Guide to American Literature (Detroit: St. James, 1995).
"Barbara W. Tuchman." The Reference Guide to
American Literature (St. James, 1995).
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND CHAIRED PANELS
"Living with Post-Tenure Review." 66th Annual Conference of Louisiana Colleges and Universities, March 18th and 19th, 2004; The University of New Orleans. Panel Chair.
"'A reddish face, a large mouth & many teeth gone': Altered Portraits, Suppressed Photographs, and the Visual Beautification of the Brontës." Ninth Annual Conference on 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers, March 15 - 17, 2001; The University of Kansas.
"'To Live in Idleness and in All Sorts of Vice, Upon the Produce of Infant Labour':Richard Carlile's Radical Lion and the Factory Question." Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. September 24-26, 1999;Yale University. "'I returned to my
former evil practices, as the dog to his vomit': Working-Class
Autobiographies by
Women and the Parameters of Sexuality."Eighth Annual Conference on 18th- and 19th-Century British
Women Writers, September 18-20, 1999; The University of New Mexico.
"'It Was the Best of Times, It
Was the Worst of Times': Fictional Modes of Violence in Dickens'
Novels and the Era of the Silent Film."Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference
on Literature and
Film. January 28-30, 1999;
Florida State University.
"Pedagogy and
Oppositions: Noncanonical British Women Writers Versus Biochemistry,
Engineering,
and Aviation Technology." Seventh
Annual Conference on 18th- and 19th-Century British
Women Writers, March 26-28, 1998; The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
"'They Shall Want No
Good Thing That A Mother's Care Can Give': The Exegesis of Motherhood
in
Anne Brontë's
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." Fifth Annual Conference on 18th- and
19th-
Century British Women Writers, March 21-23, 1996; The University of
South Carolina.
"`In All Their
Wretchedness, In All the Squalid Misery of Their Lives': Working-Class
Autobiography
and Gender Dicotomized Methodology." Twentieth Annual Meeting of the
Philological
Association of the Carolinas, March 1996; Winthrop University.
"'A Positive Check to
the Natural Increase in Population': Dickens, Martineau, and the
Problematics
of the Malthusian Trap." Twenty-Third Annual Carolinas Symposium on
British Studies.
October 5-6. 1996; Coastal Carolina University.
"Dickens Through a
Cracked Lens: Early Cinematic Versions of Oliver Twist."
Twentieth Annual
Conference on Literature and Film. January 26 - 28, 1995; Florida State
University.
"'Miserable Realities':
Fictive Biography and Victorian Factory Children." Twenty-Second Annual
Carolinas Symposium on British Studies. October 7-8, 1995; Appalachian
State University.
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
Anne Brontë's Indictment of Victorian Society." Third Annual
Conference on 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers. April 15 -
16, 1994;
Michigan State University.
"Anne Brontë and the
Problematic of the Feminist Paradigm." Seventh Annual Women's Studies
Conference. April 1994; The University of South Carolina.
"Davis, Dickens, Cather, and Fields: The Long, Strange Journey of 'Blind Tom.'" American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace. December 1994; The University of South Carolina.
INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY PRESENTATIONS
"The Brontës: A Smart-Classroom Demonstration." Presented for the Louisiana Tech Fee Committee. October 31, 2001.
"Using Presentation Software to Contextualize Regency and Victorian England." Panelist on "Innovation and Collaboration: Delivering Distance English Education." Technology in Higher Education Conference. 10 April 2000; Louisiana State University.
GRANTS
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND SERVICE
THESES DIRECTED
"A Jane Austen Naif in a Sex and the City World: Bridget Jones as the Re-invention of the Austen Heroine." Carey Bess Roberson, Successfully Defended February 2003.
"'And drew in her breath with a hissing sound': The Emergence of the Female Vampire in Victorian Literature." Megan Crystal Webb, Successfully Defended May 2003. "Novel to Film
Adaptation, Fidelity, and Social Stereotypes about Women and Marriage:
A Critical Analysis of Two Film
Versions of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre." Danika
Bethea Taylor, Successfully Defended May 2004.
“Friends and
Collaborators: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and the Rise of the
Sensation Novel in Victorian England.” Barbara Glenn, Successfully
Defended
July 2006.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE