Tamara S. Ketabgian

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On sabbatical leave 2008-09 Department of English Beloit College 700 College St. Beloit, WI 53511

Office (608) 363-2682 Fax (608) 363-2082 Email http://beloit.edu/~ketabgia

EMPLOYMENT

Associate Professor: Department of English, Beloit College, 2008-

Assistant Professor: Department of English, Beloit College, 2005-08

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Beloit College, 2004

Assistant Professor: Department of English, University of Utah, 1999-2004

Lecturer: Writing Program, Princeton University, 1997

EDUCATION 

Ph.D., Princeton University, English Literature (1999). 

Dissertation: The Human Part: Machinery and the Industrial Subject in Victorian Literature (1999). Directors: Professors Diana Fuss and Deborah Nord

M.A., Princeton University, English Literature, with distinction (1995). 

B.A., Harvard University, English Literature and Fine Arts, magna cum laude (1992). 

AWARDS AND HONORS

American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship (2008-09)

Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Enhancing Faculty Agendas Grant (2007)

Donald Gray Essay Prize, North American Victorian Studies Association; honorable mention (2005)

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Grant (2002-03)
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant, Huntington Library (2002-03, declined)
International Faculty Professional Development Grant, University of Utah (2001) 
Coral Lansbury Travel Grant, Northeast Victorian Studies Association (1999)
Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Honorific Fellowship, Princeton University (1996-97)
Honorary Mellon Prize Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values (1996-97)
Presidential Fellowship, Princeton University (1993-97)
Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University (1992)
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholar, Harvard University (1990-92)
Harvard College Scholarship, Harvard University (1990-92)

PUBLICATIONS

“Foreign Tastes and ‘Manchester Tea-Parties’: Eating and Drinking with the Victorian Lower Orders.” Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Tamara Wagner and Narin Hassan (Lexington Press, 2007) 125-39.

"‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times." Victorian Studies 45:4 (Summer 2003): 649-676.

"Mesmerism, Martineau, and the ‘Night Side of Nature.’" Special Issue on Harriet Martineau, ed. Valerie Sanders, Women’s Writing 9:3 (Fall 2002): 351-368.

"The Human Prosthesis: Workers and Machines in the Victorian Industrial Scene." Critical Matrix,Vol. 11: 1 (1997): 4-32.

“Spending Sprees and Machine Accidents: Martineau and the Mystery of Improvidence,” Harriet Martineau: Authorship, Society, Empire, ed. Cora Kaplan and Ella Dzelzainis (under review at Manchester University Press).

BOOK MANUSCRIPT

The Lives of Machines: The Industrial Imaginary in Victorian Literature and Culture

(Completed manuscript: 252 pages, 6 black and white images).

BOOK REVIEWS

Review essay, Catherine Gallagher, The Body Economic in Bryn Maw Comparative Literature Review 6:2 (2007). http://www.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/.

Review, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Victorian Literature and the Victorian State in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 11 (2006).

Review, Helen Small and Trudi Tate, ed. Literature, Science, Psychoanalysis, 1830-1970 in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 9 (2004).

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Science of Fiction: Vision and Natural Theology in Victorian Culture and Beyond

(Book manuscript; research funded by the American Philosophical Society).

“Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Wells” (article).

“Garbage, Knowledge, and Ways of Seeing: Teaching Dickens in an Interdisciplinary Studies Course” (article). Invited submission for Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum, ed. Colin Irvine. 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Beloit College

FYI (First-year Seminar): Imaginary Cities (2006)

Writing 100: Our Animal Selves (2005-07)

Writing 100: Technobodies (2006)

English 190: Introduction to Literary Study (“Passions and Interests” – 2006, “Machine Dreams” – 2005, “Utopia Limited” – 2004, 2007-08)

English 195: British Literary Traditions: From Green Knights to White Teeth (2005)

English 246: Introduction to Critical Theory (2008)

English 254: Romanticism and the Ends of Reason (2004, 2007)

English 258: Modernity and Melancholia: British Literature, 1860s to 1920s (2006, 2008)

English 301: Literature in Context:

English/Interdisciplinary Studies: Victorian Garbage: Disgust and Desire in British Literature and Culture (2004, 2007)

English/Interdisciplinary Studies: Steam, Speed, and Modernity: Victorian and Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture (2006)

English/ Women’s Studies: The Rise of the Self-Help Book: Narrative, Gender, and the British Novel (2005)

For more recent course websites, see Beloit College’s Moodle site.

University of Utah

English 2900: Introduction to Literary Forms (1999, 2002)

English 3702: Introduction to Literary History: Enlightenment to Romanticism (1999-2000)

English 3900: Introduction to Critical Theory (2001)

English 5600: The Victorian Industrial Scene: British Studies Interdisciplinary Seminar (2002)

English 5760: Victorian Literature and Culture (2000, 2001)

English 6670: Graduate Seminar: Nineteenth-Century British Literature (2000, 2001)

TEACHING FIELDS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS 

 Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

Eighteenth-Century Literature
 The Novel (18th-20th Century)
 History of Science and Technology

Critical Theory

Gender Studies

Science Fiction and Utopian Literature

Children’s Literature

Psychoanalytic Theory

CONFERENCE PAPERS

“The Victorian City in the Classroom: Cultural Geography and the Literary Imagination.” Teaching the City; Lawrence University (April 2008).

“Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Wells.” Minds, Bodies,

Machines; Birkbeck College, University of London (July 2007).

“Martineau and the Mystery of Improvidence: Luxury, Perversity, and Machine Culture.” Harriet

Martineau: Subjects and Subjectivities, Institute of English Studies, University of London (April 2007).

“Sun Engines and Mechanical Mastery: Psychic Force in The Mill on the Floss and Victorian Culture,” North American Victorian Studies Association, Purdue University (September 2006).

“Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Victorian Science Fiction.” North American Victorian Studies Association, University of Toronto (October 2004).

"Miraculous Engines: Natural Theology and Narratives of the Posthuman," Invited Lecture, The Prehistory of the Posthuman, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University (June 2003).

"'A Musical Steam Engine': Victorian Pianos, Souls, and Machines," Works-in-Progress Talk, Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah (September 2002).

"Improvidence and Manchester Tea-Parties: Eating and Drinking with the Victorian Lower Orders," Modern Language Association Convention, New Orleans (December 2001).

"Appetites as 'Regular' as the Machine: Politics and Hunger Pangs in Mary Barton and Victorian Social Investigation," North American Conference on British Studies, Toronto (November 2001).

"'Lisztomania' and the Language of the Soul: Music and Mechanism in Eliot, Heine, and Jewsbury,"Textual Intersections in the Nineteenth Century,Cardiff University (July 2001).

"The 'Night Side of Nature': Mesmerism, Martineau, and the World of Force," Victorian Nocturnes,Northeast Victorian Studies Conference, Brown University (April 2001).

"Arabian Fables and Asiatic Despots: Victorian Visions of Industrial Technology," Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (December 1999).

"Memories of a Time before 'Steam': Industrial Life, Handloom Weavers, and the Hearth,"Victorian Memory,Northeast Victorian Studies Conference, Yale University (April 1999).

"'Melancholy Mad Elephants': Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times," Works-in-Progress Colloquium, Princeton University (September 1998).

"Growing Prostheses and Human Appendages: The Victorian Factory System, according to Karl Marx and Charles Babbage," Body Parts/ Partial Bodies,University of Pennsylvania (April 1997).

"Factory 'Hands' and Severed Arms: Violence, Class, and Machine Culture in Victorian Industrial Accounts,"Cultural Violence, George Washington University (March 1997).

"Heroism and Its Hidden Female Author: Women and the Patriotic Narrative in Hemans’s 'Casabianca' and 'The Siege of Valencia,'"Rethinking Women's Poetry, 1780-1950, Birkbeck College, University of London (July 1995).

ACADEMIC AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

ISR (Information Services and Resources) Director Search Committee, Beloit College (2008)

Acting Director of the Writing Program, Beloit College (2005-2006)

Professional and Program Development Committee, Beloit College (2006-08)

Director of Literary Studies, Department of English, Beloit College (2004-06)

Dean’s Task Force on Teaching and Learning, Beloit College (2004-05)

Interviewer, Presidential Scholarship Competition, Beloit College (2005-)

Music Department Search Committee, Beloit College (2005-06)

Writing Program Committee, Beloit College (2005-)

Panel Moderator, Academic Symposium, Beloit College (2005-)

Modern Language Association Bibliography Committee, Victorian Division (2002-)

Chair and Respondent, Utah Symposium on Science and Literature, University of Utah (May 2002)

Council of Dee Fellows [Fellow for Teaching], University of Utah (2001-03)

Writing Program Director Search Committee, University of Utah (2001)

Undergraduate Studies Committee, Department of English, University of Utah (1999-2004)

Eighteenth-Century Search Committee, Department of English, University of Utah (1999-2000)

Chair, “Engineered Identities: Race, Nation, and the Literature of Technology,” Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (December 1999)

References supplied upon request.

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