Professor Literature (19th Century British, Romanticism)
Professor Tim Wandling is currently the Department Chair and has been a Literature faculty member of the department since completing his doctorate at Stanford in 1997, on Byron, “Transgressive Eloquence,” and 19th Century theories about reading. His scholarly interests include Romantic and Victorian literature, Singer Songwriters, Frankfurt School critical theory, socialist feminism, utopian and social protest literature of all sorts, and the New Women literature of the late 19th c. He has presented or published papers on Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy, J.S. Mill, and the teaching of Social Protest literature. In 2019, he presented the paper “‘Fierce Loves’ and Romantic Ironies: Joni Mitchell and Lord Byron” at the International Conference on Romanticism in Manchester England. His current book project, Living Romanticism, addresses connections between 19th C. Romantic Poets and 1970s Singer Songwriters.
His teaching interests include the Romantic poets and writers, especially Byron and Mary and Percy Shelley, Emily Brontë, Thomas Hardy, and James Joyce. He offers graduate and undergraduate courses on 19th century writers in the context of class, gender and/or aestheticism. He has recently been developing courses focused on the interesting way in which 19th C. writers have come out of the closet in the late 20th and 21st century reception (Literature: Now and Then). True to his love of curricular innovation, he developed and has frequently taught the department’s large survey course, covering everything from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond. Like his favorite writers, he also loves nature.