Holly Faith Nelson Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English; (on sabbatical 2009-2010; visiting scholar, UBC (2009-2010)

Department: School of Graduate Studies, MAIH; FHSS, English

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Area of Expertise: early modern literature; British civil war literature; literature of the long eighteenth century; Scottish Romanticism; gender and literature; theology and literature; politics and literature

Research: Henry Vaughan; early-modern devotional poetry; Margaret Cavendish; early-modern women's writing; Daniel Defoe; James Hogg; Scottish Romanticism; trauma and the literature of war.

Education: B.A., Ph.D. in English (Simon Fraser University)

  Holly Faith Nelson brings with her critical and theoretical talents in the areas of early-modern literature, gender studies, and Scottish Romanticism. She has co-edited The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose, Of Paradise and Light: Essays on Henry Vaughan and John Milton in Honor of Alan Rudrum, and Eikon Basilike with Selections from Eikonoklastes and is currently co-editing James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working Class Author with Dr. Sharon Alker. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Studies in English Literature, Studies in Philology, English Language Notes, Eighteenth Century Fiction, Scintilla: The Journal of the Usk Valley Vaughan Association, and Studies in Hogg and His World. She contributed several articles to The New Dictionary of National Biography and is the John Donne reviewer for The Year’s Work in English Studies. She is currently working with Dr. Sharon Alker ( Whitman College ) on the representation of trauma in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, is presently co-editing with Lynn Szabo and Jens Zimmermann Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, and is cofounding and coediting Digital Defoe with Dr. Katherine Ellison (Illinois State University).  She also serves as a co-director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University.

 Publications:

Books:

  • Editor, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture, forthcoming Ashgate, 2011 (with Sharon Alker and Leith Davis).
  • Editor, Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, forthcoming Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010 (with Lynn Szabo and Jens Zimmermann).
  • Editor, James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working-Class Author,  Ashgate, 2009 (with Sharon Alker) http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754665694.
  • Editor, Eikon Basilike with selections from Eikonoklastes, Broadview Press, 2005 (with Jim Daems)
  • Editor, Of Paradise and Light: Essays on Henry Vaughan and John Milton in Honor of Alan Rudrum, University of Delaware Press, 2004 (with Donald R. Dickson)
  • Editor, Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose, Broadview Press, 2000 (with Alan Rudrum and Joseph Black)

Selected Articles:

  • "Teaching Oroonoko as a War Narrative,"  Approaches to Teaching Behn's Oroonoko, ed. Cynthia Richards and Mary Ann O'Donnell, forthcoming Modern Language Association, 2011 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Hogg and Working-Class Writing," The Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg, ed. Ian Duncan and Douglas S. Mack, forthcoming Edinburgh University Press, 2011 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Dis/ability, Medicine, and Metaphysics in the works of Lady Anne Conway," in Science and Women's Literary Discourse in the 17th and 18th Century: Paving the Way for Frankenstein, edited by Judy Hayden, forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Upon the Rack": George Herbert, William Cowper, and the Discourse of Dis/ability," The Cowper and Newton Bulletin 8.1 (2009): 8-18.
  • "Pamphlet Wars: Tropological Union in Defoe's Anglo-Scottish Works," in Form, Function,Genre: Positioning Daniel Defoe's Non-Fiction," ed. Aino Mäkikalli and Andreas Mueller, forthcoming Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "The Science of Nature: Colonial Resistance in Hogg's 'The Pongos,'" James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace, Ashgate, 2009 (with Sharon Alker). 
  • "Memory, Monuments, and Melancholy Genius in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo, Eighteenth Century Fiction 21:1, (Fall 2008): 13-35 (with Sharon Alker).
  • “Staging the Shifting Nation: Macbeth, the Jacobean Scot, and the Politics of the Union,” Studies in English Literature (Spring 2007): 379-401 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Historical Consciousness and the Politics of Translation in the Psalms of Henry Vaughan," Studies in Philology 104.4 (2007): 501-525.
  • John Donne, "Milton and Poetry, 1603-1660," The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 86, Number 1, Oxford University Press (2007): 514-526.
  • "James Hogg as Working Class Autobiographer: Tactical Maneuvers in a 'Memoir of the Author's Life," Studies in Hogg and His World 18 (2007): 63-80 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "'Make all things new! And without end!' The Eschatological Vision of Henry Vaughan," Scintilla: The Journal of the Usk Valley Vaughan Association 10 (2006): 222-235.
  • "John Donne," Milton and Poetry, 1603-1660. The Year's Work in English Studies, Vol. 85, Number 1, Oxford University Press (2006): 495-506.
  • "Nascent Christian Feminism in Medieval and Early Modern Britain," Being Feminist, Being Christian: Essays from Academia . Ed. Allyson Jule and Bettina Tate Pedersen. New York. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 157-180.
  • "'Ghastly in the Moonlight': Wordsworth, Hogg and the Anguish of War," Studies in Hogg and his World 15 (2005): 76-89. (with Sharon Alker).
  • "John Donne," Milton and Poetry, 1603-1660. The Year's Work in English Studies, Vol. 84. Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • "Biblical Structures in Silex Scintillans: The Poetics and Politics of Intertextuality," Of Paradise and Light: Essays on Henry Vaughan and John Milton in Honor of Alan Rudrum, Ed. Donald R. Dickson and Holly Faith Nelson, University of Delaware Press, 2004. 165-191.
  • "Alicia D'Anvers," New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • "Lady Sarah Piers," New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • "Gender, Nature and Politics in the Writings of Henry Vaughan" Scintilla: The Journal of the Usk Valley Vaughan Association 7 (2003): 99-115.
  • "'Worms in the dull earth of ignorance': Female Authorship and Zoosemiotics in the Works of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle," English Language Notes (2002):13-25.
  • "Marginal Voices and Transgressive Borders in Hogg's Epic Queen Hynde," Studies in Hogg and his World 12 (2001): 25-39. (With Sharon Alker).

Notable accomplishments and experiences:

  • Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust Grant (2007)
  • Davis Distinguished Teaching Award (2005)
  • Internal SSHRC Institutional Grants (2003-2006)
  • Guest Expert on "Sexual Harassment and the Glass Ceiling (Part II)" and "Gender Portrayals in the Media" Online, NowTV (2004)
  • Invited Speaker on "The Politics of Gender in the Works of Henry Vaughan," Usk Valley Vaughan Association Seventh Colloquium, Buckland Hall, Wales (2002).
  • Invited Conferee, "Liberty, Monarchy, Regicide: The Trial and Execution of Charles I," Liberty Fund Conference, Cleveland, Ohio
  • Professional Research Fund Travel Grant
  • Developer, co-founder, and co-director, Gender Studies Institute 

Memberships and Affiliations:

  • MLA (Modern Language Association)
  • Renaissance Society of America
  • Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society
  • The Usk Valley Vaughan Association
  • James Hogg Society
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
  • ACCUTE
  • ASECS
  • NASSR