Marie Shelton

I am a Ph.D. candidate, Presidential fellow, Writing Center tutor, and theater director currently completing my dissertation, “A Theater of One’s Own: Performing Gender and Antitheatricality in the 19^th-century American Novel.” With an emphasis on performative narration in novels of the long 19^th century, I turn to the vocabulary of Performance Studies (i.e., presence, make belief, restored behavior, social drama) to newly contextualize literary form in relation to the formal innovations of American performance history This interdisciplinary and transhistorical methodology excavates new formal connections, historical behaviors, and even cultural dispositions (like the antitheatrical prejudice) that point to how American literature has and continues to rehearse new forms of belief and social belonging.

My teaching engages with genres and critical theories that reside at the interstices of this literary and performative network. These include but are not limited to the American gothic and realism, Shakespeare and American drama, belief and religion, gender and sexuality, and race and immigration. Previous courses include “‘The Times They Are A-Changin:’ The Rhetoric of Protest” for the University Writing Program and “Naughty Narrators” for the English Department. I’ve also assisted introductory courses in the departments of American Studies and Film, Television, and Theater (FTT), as well as an English-majors course, “Literatures of the Reconstruction and Gilded Age,” under Sandra Gustafson.

Prior to academia, I trained as a classical theater actress and applied theatre practitioner. I was a visiting lecturer at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, facilitating practical courses on Shakespeare and Teatro para Cambio Social, and Artistic Assistant at La Jolla Playhouse.

M.A. English, American Literature: University of Notre Dame.
B.A. English and Theatre & Performance Studies (double major, dual honors): University of California, Berkeley.

Translation proficiencies in French and Spanish.

Recent Scholarly Activity:

“From the Prairies to the Fields of France: Willa Cather’s One of Our Own,” seminar on “Women in the Great War: New Critical Horizons,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). Baltimore, MD, March 2022.

“Notpeople in Notlanguage,” panel on “Cognitive Faulkner,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference (ACLA). Online, April 2021.

“Performances of Remaining: Remnants of Hamlet in Beckett’s Endgame,” University of Notre Dame’s English Graduate Student Association Conference. Online, March 2021.

“Killing Our Fathers: Distance and Development in the 19^th-Century Novel,” Townsend Center for the Humanities, Honors Thesis Workshop & Conference. University of California, Berkeley. May 2020.

“Forming the Devil: Conjuration, Possession, and Incarnation in The Brothers Karamazov,” The Troika Journal, vol. 8, spring 2019, pp. 38-42.