Tamara Ketabgian

Department of English
700 College St.
Beloit College
Beloit, WI   53511 

Office (608) 363-2682
Fax (608) 363-2082
Email address

 

EMPLOYMENT

Chair, Department of English, Beloit College, 2010-
Associate Professor: Department of English, Beloit College, 2009-
Assistant Professor: Department of English, Beloit College, 2005-08
Visiting Assistant Professor: Department of English, Beloit College, 2004-05
Assistant Professor: Department of English, University of Utah, 1999-2004

 

EDUCATION

M.A., Princeton University, English Literature, with distinction (1995)

B.A., Harvard University, English Literature and Fine Arts, magna cum laude (1992)

 

AWARDS AND HONORS

American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship (2008-09)
Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Enhancing Faculty Agendas Grant (2007)
Donald Gray Essay Prize, North American Victorian Studies Association, honorable mention (2005)
American Council of Learned Scholars (ACLS) Fellowship (2002-03)
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship, Huntington Library (2002-03, declined)
International Faculty Professional Development Grant, University of Utah (2001)
Coral Lansbury Travel Grant, Northeast Victorian Studies Association (1999)
Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Honorific Fellowship, Princeton University (1996-97)
Mellon Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University Center for Human Values (1996-97)
Presidential Fellowship, Princeton University (1993-97)
Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University (1992)
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholar, Harvard University (1990-92)
Harvard College Scholarship, Harvard University (1990-92)

 

BOOK

The Lives of Machines: The Industrial Imaginary in Victorian Literature and Culture  (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2011))

 

ARTICLES

“Prosthetic Divinity: Babbage’s Engine, Spiritual Intelligence, and the Senses,” Victorian Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Fall 2009) 33-36.

“Spending Sprees and Machine Accidents: Martineau and the Mystery of Improvidence” in Harriet Martineau: Authorship, Society, Empire, ed. Cora Kaplan and Ella Dzelzainis (Manchester University Press, 2010) 151-62.

“Foreign Tastes and ‘Manchester Tea-Parties’: Eating and Drinking with the Victorian Lower Orders” in Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Tamara S. Wagner and Narin Hassan (Lexington Press, 2007) 125-39.

“‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times.” Victorian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Summer 2003) 650-76.

“Mesmerism, Martineau, and the ‘Night Side of Nature.’” Special Issue on Harriet Martineau, ed. Valerie Sanders, Women’s Writing, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Fall 2002) 351-68.

“The Human Prosthesis: Workers and Machines in the Victorian Industrial Scene.” Critical Matrix, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1997) 4-32.

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Science of Fiction: Vision and Natural Theology in Victorian Culture and Beyond  (Book manuscript; research funded by the American Philosophical Society)

“Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Wells” (article).

“Garbage, Knowledge, and Ways of Seeing: Teaching Dickens in an Interdisciplinary Studies Course” (article).  Invited submission for Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum, ed. Colin Irvine.

 

BOOK REVIEWS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Entries and annotated bibliographies: "Affect," "Machines," and "Technology" for Victorian Literature, Oxford Bibliographies Online (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).

Review of Richard Menke, Telegraphic Realism in Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (RaVon) No. 51 (2008).

Review essay, Catherine Gallagher, The Body Economic in Bryn Mawr Comparative Literature Review Vol. 6, No. 2 (2007).

Review of Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Victorian Literature and the Victorian State in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, Vol. 11 (2006).

Review of Helen Small and Trudi Tate, ed. Literature, Science, Psychoanalysis, 1830-1970 in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, Vol. 9 (2004).

 

SELECTED LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

“Seeing Machines and Reading Machines: H. G. Wells and Scientific Faith.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Montreal (scheduled for November 2010).

“Playing God: Simulation and Scientific Faith in Charles Babbage and His Popularizers.”  Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference; University of Texas at Austin (March 2010).

“Teaching Victorian Photographic Ethnography: From John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and Its People (1874-74) to Street Life in London (1877).”  Poster Session, Asian Studies Colloquium: Bringing Asian Arts and Material Culture into the Undergraduate Curriculum, Beloit College (September 2009).

“Posthuman Identity and Victorian Literature,” Invited Lecture, Department of Foreign Languages, Henan University, Kaifeng, People’s Republic of China (April 2009).     

“The Victorian City in the Classroom: Cultural Geography and the Literary Imagination.” Teaching the City, Lawrence University (April 2008).

“Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Wells.” Minds, Bodies, Machines; Birkbeck College, University of London (July 2007).

“Martineau and the Mystery of Improvidence: Luxury, Perversity, and Machine Culture.” Harriet Martineau: Subjects and Subjectivities, Institute of English Studies, University of London (April 2007).

“Sun Engines and Mechanical Mastery: Psychic Force in The Mill on the Floss and Victorian Culture,” North American Victorian Studies Association, Purdue University (September 2006).

“Mechanical Appetite: Hunger Pangs and Human Feelings in Mary Barton.” Invited lecture, Macalester College (February 2005).

 “Miraculous Engines: Charles Babbage and Nineteenth-Century Narratives of the Posthuman.” North American Victorian Studies Association, University of Toronto (October 2004).

“Miraculous Engines: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of the Posthuman.” Invited Lecture, The Prehistory of the Posthuman, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University (June 2003).

“‘A Musical Steam Engine’: Victorian Pianos, Souls, and Machines.” Works-in-Progress Talk, Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah (September 2002).

“Improvidence and ‘Manchester Tea-Parties’: Eating and Drinking with the Victorian Lower Orders.” Modern Language Association Convention, New Orleans (December 2001).

 “‘Lisztomania’ and the Language of the Soul: Music and Mechanism in Eliot, Heine, and Jewsbury.” Textual Intersections in the Nineteenth Century, Cardiff University (July 2001).

 “‘The ‘Night Side of Nature’: Mesmerism, Martineau, and the World of Force.” Victorian Nocturnes, Northeast Victorian Studies Conference, Brown University (April 2001).

“Arabian Fables and Asiatic Despots: Victorian Visions of Industrial Technology.” Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (December 1999).

“Memories of a Time before ‘Steam’: Industrial Life, Handloom Weavers, and the Hearth.” Victorian Memory, Northeast Victorian Studies Conference, Yale University (April 1999). 

“‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times.” Works-in-Progress Colloquium, Princeton University (September 1998).

“Growing Prostheses and Human Appendages: The Victorian Factory System, according to Karl Marx and Charles Babbage.” Body Parts/ Partial Bodies, University of Pennsylvania (April 1997).

“Factory ‘Hands’ and Severed Arms: Violence, Class, and Machine Culture in Victorian Industrial Accounts.” Cultural Violence, George Washington University (March 1997).

“Heroism and Its Hidden Female Author: Women and the Patriotic Narrative in Hemans’s ‘Casabianca’ and ‘The Siege of Valencia.’” Rethinking Women's Poetry, 1780-1950, Birkbeck College, University of London (July 1995).

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Beloit College

FYI (First-year Seminar): Imaginary Cities (2006)

Writing 100: Our Animal Selves (2005-07, 2009)

Writing 100: Technobodies (2006)

English 190: Introduction to Literary Study (“Passions and Interests” – 2006, “Machine Dreams” – 2005, “Utopia Limited” – 2004, 2007-08, 2009, “Other Minds” – 2010)

English 195: British Literary Traditions: From Green Knights to White Teeth (2005)

English 246: Introduction to Critical Theory (2008, 2010)

English 254: Romanticism and the Ends of Reason (2004, 2007)

English 258: Modernity and Melancholia: British Literature, 1860s to 1920s (2006, 2008)

English 301: Literature in Context:

English/Interdisciplinary Studies: Victorian Garbage: Disgust and Desire in British Literature and Culture (2004, 2007, 2009)

English/Interdisciplinary Studies: Steam, Speed, and Modernity: Victorian and Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture (2006)

English/ Women’s Studies: The Rise of the Self-Help Book: Narrative, Gender, and the British Novel (2005)

University of Utah

English 2900: Introduction to Literary Forms (1999, 2002)

English 3702: Introduction to Literary History: Enlightenment to Romanticism (1999-2000)

English 3900: Introduction to Critical Theory (2001)

English 5600: The Victorian Industrial Scene: British Studies Interdisciplinary Seminar (2002)

English 5760: Victorian Literature and Culture (“Narratives of Passion” – 2000, “The Self-Help Book” – 2001)

English 6670: Graduate Seminar: Nineteenth-Century British Literature (2000, 2001)

 

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

North American Victorian Studies Association   

Society for Literature and Science

Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association

Modern Language Association 

 

ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE

Chair, Department of English, Beloit College (2010-)
Interdisciplinary Studies Committee, Beloit College (2010-)
Faculty Status and Performance Committee, Beloit College (2009-10)
Wright Museum Collections Committee, Beloit College (2009-)
ISR (Information Services and Resources) Director Search Committee, Beloit College (2008)
Acting Director of the Writing Program, Beloit College (2005-2006)
Professional and Program Development Committee, Beloit College (2006-08)
Director of Literary Studies, Department of English, Beloit College (2004-06)
Dean’s Task Force on Teaching and Learning, Beloit College (2004-05)
Interviewer, Presidential Scholarship Competition, Beloit College (2005-)
Music Department Search Committee, Beloit College (2005-06)
Writing Program Committee, Beloit College (2005-08)
Panel Moderator, Academic Symposium, Beloit College (2005-)
Bibliographer, Victorian Studies (2002-)
Chair, Respondent, and Participant, “The Man of Parts,” Utah Symposium on Science and Literature, University of Utah (May 2002)
Council of Dee Fellows [Fellow for Teaching], University of Utah (2001-03)
Writing Program Director Search Committee, University of Utah (2001)
Undergraduate Studies Committee, Department of English, University of Utah (1999-2004)
Eighteenth-Century Search Committee, Department of English, University of Utah (1999-2000)
Chair, “Engineered Identities: Race, Nation, and the Literature of Technology,” Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (December 1999)

 

References provided upon request.