Holly Faith Nelson Ph.D.

Professor of English; Chair of the English Department; Co-Director, Gender Studies Institute

Department: English; MAIH

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Area of Expertise: early modern British literature; British civil war literature; literature of the long eighteenth century; Scottish literature; 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 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, Eikon Basilike with Selections from Eikonoklastes, James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working Class Author, and Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory.  She is currently co-editing with Sharon Alker and Leith Davis, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture and with Katherine Ellison and Kit Kincade, New Approaches to Daniel Defoe. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Studies in English Literature, Studies in Philology, English Language Notes, the George Herbert Journal, Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, Eighteenth Century Fiction, Scintilla: The Journal of the Usk Valley Vaughan Association, and Studies in Hogg and His World. She is currently working with Dr. Sharon Alker (Whitman College) on the manuscript "The Spaces of War: Representations of Combat Zones in British Literature, 1642-1715 -which is funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant. She co-founded and co-edits Digital Defoe: Studies on Defoe and His Contemporaries with Dr. Katherine Ellison (Illinois State University).  She also co-founded and co-directs the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University 

 PUBLICATIONS:

Books:

Selected Articles: 

  • "Transatlanticism and Beyond: Robert Burns and the World Wide Web," in Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture, ed. Sharon Alker, Leith Davis, and Holly Faith Nelson, forthcoming Ashgate 2012 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Teaching Oroonoko as a War Narrative," in Approaches to Teaching Behn's Oroonoko, ed. Cynthia Richards and Mary Ann O'Donnell, forthcoming Modern Language Association, 2012 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Writing Science Fiction in the Shadow of War:  Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World," in Expanding Worlds: Travel, The New Science, and Literary Discourse, ed. Judy Hayden, forthcoming Ashgate, 2012 (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, 2012 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Dis/ability, Medicine, and Metaphysics in the works of Lady Anne Conway," in Science and Women's Literary Discourse in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Paving the Way for Frankenstein, ed. Judy Hayden, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 (with Sharon Alker). 65-83.
  • "The Subaltern in Academia: Advancing an Ethos of Equity," Academic Apartheid: Waging the Adjunct War, ed. Sylvia M DeSantis, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. 27-29.
  • "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,  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010 (with Sharon Alker). 17-37.
  • "From Scotland to the Holy Land: Renegotiating Scottish Identity in the Pilgrim Narrative of William Lithgow," Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 19. 1-2(2009/2010): 176-202 (with Sharon Alker).
  • "Upon the Rack": George Herbert, William Cowper, and the Hermeneutic of Dis/ability," George Herbert Journal, 32. 1-2 (2008/2009):54-67 (with Laura E. Ralph). [An earlier version of the article was published in The Cowper and Newton Bulletin, 8.1 (2009): 8-18].
  • "Trauma and Transcendence: An Introduction," Through A Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, ed. Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo and Jens Zimmermann, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010. xv-xxvii.
  • "Defoe 2.0: An Editorial Introduction," Digital Defoe 1.1 (2009), digitaldefoe/introduction/index.shtml (with Katherine Ellison).
  • "The Science of Nature: Colonial Resistance in Hogg's 'The Pongos,'" James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace,  ed. Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson, Ashgate, 2009 (with Sharon Alker). 201-217.
  • "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 47.2 (Spring 2007): 379-401 (with Sharon Alker).
  • John Donne in "Milton and Poetry, 1603-1660." YWES. Vol. 87 (2008): 559-569.
  • "Historical Consciousness and the Politics of Translation in the Psalms of Henry Vaughan," Studies in Philology 104.4 (2007): 501-525. [Reprinted in John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets. Bloom's Modern Critical Views.  Chelsea House Publishing, 2010.]
  • 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).

Book Reviews:

  • Review of Walter Scott, The Betrothed, ed. J. B. Ellis, with J. H. Alexander and David Hewitt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2099.  Forthcoming Studies in Hogg and his World, 2011.

  • Review of The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume III, 1832-1835, ed. Gillian Hughes et al. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.  Scottish Literary Review 2011.
  • Review of Jason McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007. Royal Stuart Journal, 1(2009):59-61.
  • Review of Reid Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Seventeenth-Century News 63, nos. 3-4 (2005): 161-164.
  • Review of Gillian Hughes, ed. A Series of Lay Sermons on Good Principles and Good Breeding. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. SCOTIA: Interdisciplinary Journal of ScottishStudies 29 (2005): 61-62.

Notable accomplishments and experiences:

  • Principal Investigator, "The Spaces of War: Representations of Combat Zones in British Literature, 1642-1715," SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2011-2014)
  • Visiting Scholar, English Department, University of British Columbia (2009-2010)
  • Co-founder and co-editor, Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe and His Contemporaries (2009)
  • Collaborator, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture Workshop, funded by a SSHRC Research Worship Grant (with Leith Davis and Sharon Alker) (2008)
  • Principal Investigator, TWU Research Grant: Gender and Religion Research Symposium (with Allyson Jule, Robynne Healey, and Alma Barranco Mendoza) (2008)
  • Invited Lecturer, "The Other Scottish Bard: James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd," Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University SFU Harbour Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia (2008)
  • Developer, co-founder, and co-director, Gender Studies Institute (2008)
  • Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust Grant (with Lynn Szabo) (2007)
  • Invited Symposium Conferee, "Liberty, Monarchy, Regicide: The Trial and Execution of Charles I," Liberty Fund Conference, Cleveland, Ohio (2007)
  • Invited Roundtable Lecturer: "From the Monarch to the Mob: Editing Early-Modern Religious Works," Roundtable on Scholarly Editing, Christianity and Literature Study Group, ACCUTE, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (2006).
  • 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).
  • Professional Research Fund Travel Grant (2002)

Memberships and Affiliations:

  • Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society
  • The Usk Valley Vaughan Association
  • James Hogg Society
  • Daniel Defoe Society
  • Connotations Society
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
  • ACCUTE