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Heather Bozant Witcher, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
English


Education

Ph.D. in English, Saint Louis University

M.A. in English, Saint Louis University

B.A. in English and Creative Writing, Spring Hill College

Research Interests

British Long Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture; Romantic and Victorian Poetics; Theories of Collaboration and Sympathy; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Pre-Raphaelite Literature and Art

Her research uses the literary archive as a means of exploring diversity and connections between creative process and lived communal experience. Her first monograph is currently under external review, and explores sympathetic collaboration in the long nineteenth century. Sympathetic Texts retrieves marginal and divergent voices that have been elided or silenced by the prevailing model of solitary authorship.

Currently, she is researching the Pre-Raphaelites. This second project uses the archive to diversify the literary canon: it celebrates multiplicity, the circulation of ideas, and the unfinished as touchpoints for how words work, how forms affect the poem, and how these thought processes are shaped by involvement in coteries that remain mindful of immigration, imperial expansion, and diversity. Coinciding with this project, she is co-editing a collection of essays that seeks to identify the formal and stylistic qualities of literary Pre-Raphaelitism.

Publications and Media Placements

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Brainwork and Community in ‘Eden Bower,’” Victoriographies Special Issue, Forthcoming 2020.

“‘a royal lady [re]born’: Balladry, Transport, and Transgression in Michael Field’s The Tragic Mary,” Victorian Poetry 55.4 (Winter 2017).

“‘with me’: The Sympathetic Collaboration of Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.2, Special Issue (April 2016).

Chapter in Edited Collection

“Archival Animals: Polyphonic Movement in Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetic Drafts,” Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive. Ed. Bethany Hicock. Forthcoming from Lever Press, 2019.

Honors and Awards

2018 Mellon Faculty Development Grant, Saint Louis University, College of Arts & Sciences

2017 NEH Summer Seminar Scholar, Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive.

2016 Amy P. Goldman Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies

2015 William Morris Award

Professional Organizations and Associations

North American Victorian Studies Association, Midwest Victorian Studies Association, Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies of the Western United States, William Morris Society in the US, and Modern Language Association