Overview

Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom began in the summer of 2020 as a collaboration among four colleagues, and their vision has always been to maintain a collegial spirit as they reach out to other scholars and include them in the shared work. This page introduces the four founding developers of the project and provides their biographies.

Biographies

Pearl Chaozon Bauer, PhD (Upper School English Teacher, The Nueva School) teaches decolonial thought and Victorian seriality at a highschool for gifted learners. Previously she was Associate Professor of English at Notre Dame de Namur University. Motivated by transformational and collaborative leadership models, her research, teaching, community engagement, course development, and curriculum design are informed by Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Gender and LGBTQIA+ Studies, Indigenous Knowledge, and Peace Studies methods and philosophy. Pearl is currently working on two book projects: Love Among the Poets: The Victorian Poetics of Intimacy, co-edited with Erik Gray (Columbia University), is a collection of essays that reconsiders familial, friendly, and erotic intimacy in nineteenth-century British poetry; and Pedagogy of Space, a collaboration with Jennifer Murphy (Notre Dame de Namur University), reconfigures and decolonizes the classroom space to encourage creative agency, belonging and healing. Pronouns: She/Her/Hers.

Ryan D. Fong, PhD (Associate Professor of English, Kalamazoo College) teaches a wide variety of courses on literatures written in Britain and its colonies across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They also teach courses in Kalamazoo College’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Program, and has served as its director. Ryan is finishing his book manuscript currently titled Unsettling: Indigenous Literatures and the Work of Victorian Studies. He has published work from this project in Victorian Studies and Victorian Literature and Culture. As a faculty fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, they are also working on efforts to recruit and retain Indigenous students, incorporate Indigenous studies frameworks into the curriculum, and build more ethical relationships between the College and the local Potawatomi tribes of Southwest Michigan. Pronouns: He/They. Image courtesy of Keith Mumma.

Sophia Hsu, PhD (Assistant Professor of English, Lehman College, CUNY) teaches a range of courses, covering such topics as nineteenth-century British literature, the novel, and the medical humanities. Her current book project focuses on the Victorian novel and its relation to histories and theories of the population. Research from this and other related projects has been published or is forthcoming in SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, Dickens Studies Annual, Victorian Review, and English Language Notes. At Lehman College, Sophia has been actively involved in promoting antiracist pedagogy through her work in the English department and the Writing Across the Curriculum program. Pronouns: She/Her/Hers.

Adrian S. Wisnicki, PhD (Associate Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) teaches courses on Victorian, African, and global literary studies as well as digital humanities and contemporary technology including AI and surveillance. His teaching and research explore how intercultural and interracial dynamics shape literary discourse in both the nineteenth century and present day. He particularly enjoys scholarship that involves international collaboration and that encourages teachers and students to stray outside their intellectual and cultural comfort zones. Among other activities, he is lead developer of One More Voice, director of Livingstone Online, and author of Fieldwork of Empire (2019). Pronouns: He/Him/His.