Her dissertation, Evolutionary Narratives and Anxieties of Race in the Victorian Novel (currently under revision) set the stage for her future research interests in literary representations of science, particularly as scientific taxonomies construct or challenge characters' identities. Her current research, supported by LARA and CLAFDA grants in the College of Liberal Arts, focuses on nineteenth-century science, specifically cultural anxieties about medical technology.  Her ongoing interest in literature and medicine was recently fueled by a workshop at the Columbia University Program in Narrative Medicine, and she is currently fusing her interests in literary pedagogy and Victorian medicine in an article about Tennyson’s poetry and teaching literary texts that document experiences of the elderly.

In her day job, Dr. Wooden teaches 400-level courses in Restoration/Eighteenth Century Literature and Nineteenth-Century Literature, happily dragging students through the massive novels of the English literary past as well as delving into poetry, drama, and contemporary social, cultural, and political history to enhance students’ experience with the texts.  She also teaches courses in the university core (especially Intro to Lit), the English major/minor shared core (especially Intro to English Studies and Ways of Reading), and in the composition/rhetoric sequence (especially 100). She is also a faculty sponsor for Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society.

The philosophy that unites these apparently diverse interests is based in social history and a belief in the transformative value of reading.  Among the greatest benefits of reading critically, thoroughly, and imaginatively, is that such practice allows us to exercise our powers of empathy for all people, particularly those who are different--in history, in circumstance, in race, age, gender, sexuality, health--from us, broadening our views and making us more ethical citizens of the world.

Phone:  465-1222

Office:  LA3046

Email:  swooden@usi.edu