Rebecca Nesvet
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; defended September 4, 2013.
· Dissertation: The Vanishing Voyager and the Emerging Outsider, 1818-1930.” Major Field: Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Minor field: Life Writing. Committee: Jeanne Moskal (director), Ruth Salvaggio, Megan Matchinske, Jane Danielewicz, María DeGuzmán.
M.F.A., Dramatic Writing, New York University, 2008.
M.Phil., English, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2006.
B.A. magna cum laude, English and Theatre, Bowdoin College, 2000.
Visiting Student, English, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, 1998-99.
EMPLOYMENT
Teaching Fellow, English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2010-present.
· Instructor of Record for English 105 (Composition), English 105 (Research Exposure Section), and English 148 (Horror). For English 338 (Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, mixed lecture/seminar course), led discussion seminar component independently; graded exams and papers. Served as a Graduate Research Consultant for English 105.
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Gloucestershire, full-time, 2004-6 and 2008-10.
· For the B.A. and M.A. in Creative Writing, designed and taught all three levels of undergraduate Playwriting, Real and Imaginary Worlds, Introduction to Fiction, Introduction to Humanities, and the M.A. Creative Writing Fiction Workshop. Co-taught English Renaissance Drama. Served on the Admissions, B.A. Redesign and M.A. Design Committees, participated in Admissions recruitment events, published original research. Supervised B.A. and M.A. independent studies and theses, and taught Creative Writing to local school students as part of the Aim Higher outreach scheme. Guest-taught Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Parma, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu (Romania). Devised the Open Reading program, wherein Creative Writing B.A. and M.A. students read their work to the public in a local music venue.
BURSARIES, GRANTS, SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS INCLUDE
· Fred and Joan Thomson Award, Department of English and Comparative Literature, UNC, Chapel Hill, 2013. Recognizes the annual best dissertation in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century English or Comparative Literature.
· Future Faculty Fellowship, UNC, Chapel Hill, August 2013. University-wide competition. One of two recipients from the Department of English and Comparative Literature.
· Jennings Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Department of English and Comparative Literature, UNC, Chapel Hill, Spring 2013. Departmental competition. Only recipient.
· First Place, International Conference on Romanticism Graduate Award, for “Patagonian Giants, Frankenstein’s Creature and Contact Zone Catastrophe,” November 2012. Only recipient.
· Pre-Dissertation Travel Award, Center for Global Initiatives, UNC, Chapel Hill, 2012. University-wide. Two awarded in 2012.
· Postgraduate Bursary, Rousseau in Britain Conference, Leeds University, 2012.
· Alfred P. Sloan Writing Award, New York University, 2007.
· Alfred P. Sloan / Ensemble Studio Theatre Initiative Playwriting Commission, 2009.
· First Place, Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Playwriting Competition for LGBT History Plays, 2002.
FINALIST STATUS
· Finalist, Society for the History of Discoveries Essay Competition, for “Patagonian Giants and Frankenstein's Creature” (2012), one of 6 finalists; “Sophia Cracroft: Sir John Franklin’s Female Surrogate,” (2013), one of 4 finalists.
· First Alternate (after 2 recipients), graduate student fellowship, NEH Seminar: Reassessing Romanticism, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2013, convened by Stephen Behrendt.
RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS
· “Patagonian Giants, Frankenstein’s Creature, and Contact Zone Catastrophe.” Research essay forthcoming in Prism(s): Essays in Romanticism.
· “Robert Southey, Historian of El Dorado,” The Keats-Shelley Journal 61 (2012), pp. 116-121.
· “A Note by William Godwin.” Short news item provisionally accepted for publication in The Keats-Shelley Journal.
· “Mezirow Meets Marat: Transformative Learning and Theatre,” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (LATHE) 5 (2011): pp. 131-34.
· “‘Have You Thought of a Story?’: Scheherazade and the 1831 Frankenstein,” Women’s Writing 12.3 (2005): pp. 369-80.
· “Parallel Histories: Dryden’s Plutarch and Religious Toleration,” The Review of English Studies 56:225 (2004): pp. 424-37.
ESSAYS IN CRITICAL ANTHOLOGIES
· “‘Like the Sultaness Scheherazade’: The Storyteller and the Reading Nation,” in Mary Shelley: Her Contemporaries and Circle, ed. E. Adam Mekler and Lucy Morrison (CSP, 2010), pp. 169-84.
· “Martinengo's “Grecians” and Shakespeare's Cyprus,” in The Shakespearean International Yearbook: Volume 6, ed. Graham Bradshaw et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 28-31.
ARTS CRITICISM
· “Flying in the Face of Convention: Volcano Theatre,” The New Welsh Review 59 (2003): pp. 68-73.
UNDER REVIEW
· “Sophia Cracroft: Sir John Franklin’s Female Surrogate.” Requested and under review by Terrae Incognitae: The Journal for the Society for the History of Discoveries.
INVITED TALKS INCLUDE
· “Mr. Wilde, I Presume?: Dolly Wilde’s Oscar Act,” UNC LGBT Center Graduate Speaker Series, January 2014.
· “Neptune’s Barber: Sweeney Todd and the Royal Navy.” Friends of the Rare Books Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 2013.
· “Mary Shelley’s Gothic Pascal.” The Furst Forum, Department of English and Comparatiative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 2011.
PRINT AND DIGITAL CRITICAL EDITIONS
· Annotator for Mary Hays, The Female Biography, gen. ed. Gina Luria Walker (forthcoming, Pickering and Chatto / Chawton House Editions, 2014). In press.
· Editor, Charles the First, An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts, for The Mary Russell Mitford Society’s Digital Mitford, Gen. Ed. Elissa E. Beshero-Bondar. Forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg. In progress.
CONFERENCE PAPERS INCLUDE
· “Fletcher Christian, Byron’s Pacific Jacobite.” Byron Society of America Panel, Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference, Chicago, January 2014.
· “A Surgeon in the Closet? James Malcolm Rymer, S.R.N. and the Creator of Sweeney Todd.” International Conference on Romanticism, Oakland University, September 2013.
· “P. B. Shelley’s The Cenci and the Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles.” Rousseau in Britain Conference, Leeds University, July 2012.
· “‘That Imaginary Kingdom’: Southey and P. B. Shelley In Search of El Dorado.” Keats-Shelley Association of America Symposium, Fordham University, May 2011.
DIGITAL HUMANITIES QUALIFICATIONS INCLUDE
· XML (for the Digital Mitford project) 2013-present.
· HTML writing and editing experience, for www.reviewingtheevidence.com and other internet publications, 2004-6.
· Integration of intro to HTML coding into my Composition teaching, 2010-present.
· Participated in a selective Omeka pilot project, Wilson Library, UNC, 2012-13.
· Integration of visual composition using experimental resources developed by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RenCI) into my Composition teaching, 2010-present.
· Co-designer of the HASTAC Forum Visualizing Geography: Maps, Space, and Pedagogy. http://www.hastac.org/forums/visualizing-geography-maps-space-place-and-pedagogy, 2013.
· Designed online hypertextual syllabi for courses I teach at UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013-present.
· Extensive experience using MS Office, CamTasia, Final Draft, CelTx, Blackboard, Sakai, Moodle and various digital archives in research and teaching.
SERVICE
· Pedagogy Education Development (PED) Group Leader, one of six, The Writing Program, UNC, Chapel Hill, 2013-4.
· THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) Co-organizer, Institute for Arts and Humanities (IAH), UNC Chapel Hill, September 2012.
· Co-ordinator, Writing at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RenCI) Pedagogy Interest Group, The Writing Program, Department of English & Comparative Literature, 2011-12.
· Editor, Special Issue: “International Anglophone Theatre,” ABC: American, British, and Canadian Studies (2010), Lucian Blaga University, Romania / Anglophone Society of Romania.
· Volunteer, The Jane Austen Summer Program, UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Summer 2013.
LANGUAGES
· English – fluent
· French – reading knowledge
· Spanish – reading knowledge.
PLAYWRITING INCLUDES
The Mystery Prince, inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck. The Athenaeum Arts Center, Virginia, November 2014.
Double or Nothing, one-act. Produced by Monkeyman Productions, Toronto, in November 2011. Produced by Shoestring Radio Theatre, San Francisco, in 2010. Stage-read by the Co-Op Theatre East, New York, as part of the double bill Resolutions and Revolutions, in December 2009.
Incoherent States. Stage-read by Theatre Orb, Bournemouth, United Kingdom, in January 2011.
The Seer of Little Worlds. Commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York, on a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 2009.
The Speed of Light, an adaptation of the Romanian Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu’s “Legenda Luceafarului” / “Lucifer.” Stage-read at New York University as part of the competitive New Drama Works Festival, in 2006. Stage-read, trans. Adriana Neagu as Vitezi Luminii, by the Radu Stanca Theatre, Sibiu, Romania, as part of Sibfest, the Sibiu international theatre festival, 2007.
The Shape Shifter. First-place winner of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Playwriting Award for LGBT history drama and first-place winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education PlayWorks, 2002. Produced by Thorny Theater, Palm Springs, California, 2007. Nominated for the Desert Theatre League’s Desert Star awards for Best Original Writing and Best Overall Production, 2007.
The Girl in the Iron Mask. Developed and produced by Babes with Blades, Chicago, at the Raven Theatre, 2007, and produced by the Georgetown Theatre Company at the Capitol Fringe Festival, 2010.
The Mortal Immortal, one-act adaptation of the short story by Mary Shelley. Presented at Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania, 2009.
DRAMATURGY
Faith, by Paul Meade, commissioned by Gúna Nua, Dublin, Ireland, in collaboration with Origin Theatre Company, New York, 2012.
Spinning the Times, by Belinda McKeon, Rosemary Jenkinson, Geraldine Aron, Lucy Caldwell and Rosalind Haslett. Commissioned and produced by Origin Theatre Company, New York, 2009.
End of Lines, by Gary Duggan, Pat Kinevane, Morna Regan, Ursula Rani Sarma and Abbie Spallen. Commissioned and produced by Origin Theatre Company, New York, 2009.
The Mission of a Saint, by Colman Domingo. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Process Series, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2013.
EMPLOYMENT & RESEARCH REFERENCES
Prof. Jeanne Moskal (Dissertation Director)
English and Comparative Literature
Greenlaw Hall, CB 3520
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3520, USA
+001 919.962-8766
Prof. Ruth Salvaggio
English and Comparative Literature
Greenlaw Hall, CB 3520
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3520, USA
+001 919.962.5481
Prof. Elisa Beshero-Bondar
University of Pittsburgh, Greenbuig
150 Finoli Drive
Greensburg, PA 15601-5860, USA
+001 724.836.7195
George C. Heslin
Artistic Director, Origin Theatre Company
520 8th Avenue, Suite 329A
New York, NY 10018, USA
212-253-8300
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