Teresa Michals
Department of English (MSN 3E4)
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
(703) 993-1162
Positions Held
Associate Professor, English, George Mason University, Fall 2014 -
Assistant Professor, English, George Mason University, Fall 2008 – Fall 2014
Director of Mason Topics and Term Assistant Professor, George Mason University, Fall
1998 - Spring 2008
Term Assistant Professor, George Mason University, Fall 1995 - Spring 2008
Term Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University, Fall 1993 - Spring 1995
Education
Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, English Literature, January, 1996. Dissertation:
"Romantic Fictions of Personality and Property: Edgeworth, Austen, and
Wordsworth," directed by Frances Ferguson and Mary Poovey
Scholarly Activities
Honors
Children’s Literature Association Honor Book Award (2016) for Books for Children, Books for Adults: Age and the Novel from Defoe to James.
GMU Summer Research Funding for Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty (Summer 2016)
In Print
Books for Children, Books for Adults: Age and the Novel from Defoe to James. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Review of Over the River and Through the Woods: an Anthology of 19th-Century American Children's Poetry.The Times Literary Supplement. May 7, 2014.
"Invisible Amputation and Heroic Masculinity," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Volume 44, 2015, pp. 17-39.
“Henry James and the Invention of Adulthood.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. 44:2 (2011)
"'Like a Spoiled Actress Off the Stage': Anti-Theatricality, Nature, and the Novel."
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Volume 39 (2010).
"'Experiments Before Breakfast': Toys, Education, and Middle-Class Childhood."
Nineteenth-Century Childhood and the Rise of Consumer Culture. Ed. Dennis
Denisoff. Ashgate Press, 2008.
"'Sweet Gardening Labour': Merit and Hierarchy in Paradise Lost," Exemplaria 7 (1995):
499-518.
"Commerce and Character in Maria Edgeworth," Nineteenth-Century Literature 49
(1994): 1-20.
"'That Sole and Despotic Dominion': Slaves, Wives, and Game in Blackstone's
Commentaries," Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (1993-94): 195-217.
Reviews
Review of Eva Konig, The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: The Vicissitudes of the Eighteenth-Century Subject. Review of English Studies (2015)
Review of Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth
Lerer. XVIII New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century.
Review of Isolated Cases: The Anxieties of Autonomy in Enlightenment Philosophy and
Romantic Literature by Nancy Yousef. Modern Philology 104 (2006): 138-141.
Forthcoming
“Age, Status, and Reading in the 18th-Century.”Literary Cultures and Eighteenth-Century Childhoods. Ed. Andrew O’Malley (Palgrave)
In Progress
A Left-Handed Admiral: Horatio Nelson and Disability (book project)
Conference Papers
“Smart-Money, Pain, and Promotion,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Spring 2016.
"The Official Letter": War, Wounding, and Epistolarity, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Spring 2015.
"Useless to Himself and Others": Children's Literature, War, and Disability,Children's Literature Association.
“In His Perfect Form: Amputation and Heroic Masculinity,”Southeastern Amercian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, February 2013; American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, April 2013
“A Great, Grown-up, Dreamy, Impulsive Child: Dickens and the Liberal Intellectual” “Novel Worlds,” Duke University, April 27-28, 2012.
"Dating Pamela: Mr. B, Goody-Two Shoes, and the Age of Consent," Eighteenth and
Nineteenth-Century Cultures Workshop at the University of Chicago, April 2010.
"'For the Youth of Both Sexes': Re-Writing Pamela," American Society for Eighteenth-
Century Studies, March, 2010
"Little Books and Children Six Feet High: Differentiating Readers," American Society
for Eighteenth-Century Studies, March, 2009
“Childhood’s Edge and Imperial Policy,” 18th and 19th Century British Women Writers
Conference, March 2008
“’Like a Spoiled Actress off the Stage’: Theatre and the Novel in the 18th Century,”
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, February, 2008
“”Experiments Before Breakfast’: Edgeworth Codifies a Middle-Class Ideal,”
Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, March 2005
"Moral Life in Jane Austen: Or, Why Fine Dancing, Like Virtue, Must be its Own
Reward," The Intellectual Life of the Schools Project, August 1996
"Protecting the 'Timid Line': Wordsworth and Copyright," Washington Area
Romanticists Group, April 1995
"Maria Edgeworth and the 'Charm of Probability,'" MLA 1994
"Commerce and Character in Maria Edgeworth," Johns Hopkins University Journal Club,
September 1992
"Consuming Northanger Abbey," Johns Hopkins Woman's Studies Workshop, November
1992
Teaching
Spring 2016
ENGH 302 (Humanities)
ENGH 526: History and Criticism of Children’s Literature
Director of a thesis committee for a Masters thesis on children’s literature and animation, Fall and Spring, 2016
Director of an ENGH 790 project, Spring 2016
Advisor for an Honors Thesis on disability and Chicana drama, Spring 2016
Fall 2015
ENGH 101: Composition
ENGH 305: Dimensions of Writing and Literature
Spring 2015:
ENGH 202: Loss and Grief in Children's Literature
ENGH 400: Disability: Monsters, Freaks, and Crips
Fall 2014:
ENGH 452: Critical Study of Children's Literature
ENGH 431 / 511: 18th and 19th Century Modes
Spring 2013:
ENGH 336: The 19th Century Novel
ENGH 452: History of Children’s Literature
Fall 2012
ENGH 101: Composition
ENGH 431/511: Victorian Modes
Spring 2012:
ENGH 201: Reading and Writing about Texts
ENGH 526: Gender in Children’s Literature
Fall 2011:
ENGH 305: Dimensions of Writing and Literature
Spring 2011:
ENGL 460: Critical Study of Children’s Literature
ENGL 325: Dimensions of Writing and Literature
ENGL 101: Composition
Spring 2010:
ENGL 640: Nineteenth-Century British Literature
ENGL 526: Special Topics in the History and Criticism of Children’s Literature (Amelia Rutledge and I proposed this course)
Fall 2009:
453:British Novel of the Nineteenth-Century
460: Critical Study of Children’s Literature (Amelia Rutledge and I proposed this course)
Fall 2008:
ENGL 101: Composition
ENGL 101: Composition (linked to CONF 101: Conflict and Our World)
Fall 1993-Spring 2008:
Children’s Literature (undergraduate and graduate-level)
Nineteenth-Century British Literature (undergraduate and graduate-level)
Linked Composition
Shakespeare's Tragedies and Romances; Histories and Comedies
Romantic Authorship: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Literature and Society: Revolution and Reform; Romantic Feeling and Gothic Horror,
Romanticism and Revolution
English Poetry of the Romantic Period
Thesis Committees
Director of a thesis committee for a Masters thesis on children’s literature and animation, Fall and Spring, 2016
Director of an ENGH 790 project, Spring 2016
Advisor for anHonors Thesis on disability and Chicana drama, Spring 2016
Director of a thesis committee for a Masters thesis on Charles Dickens’s use of the marriage plot, Fall 2010
Served on a thesis committee for a Masters thesis on gender in children’s fiction of the
British Empire, Fall 2007
Independent Study in The Nineteenth-Century Novel (graduate-level), Spring 2006
Service
Fall 2015-Spring 2016
Term Faculty Committee
Salary Committee
Fall 2011-Spring 2012:
Appointments Committee
Fall 2010-Spring 2011:
Search committee for writing center director
Fall 2008-Spring 2010:
Faculty Committee
Fall 2008-Spring 2009:
Ad-Hoc Committee on Term Faculty Rating and Rubric