Alison R. Byerly
Donald E. Axinn Center for Literary and Cultural Studies
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
(802) 443-2138; byerly@middlebury.edu
Positions Held:
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Visiting Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-13
Provost and Executive Vice President, Middlebury College, 2007-12. Oversight of all
undergraduate faculty and academic programs, research centers, arts facilities,
Admissions, Environmental Affairs, International Programs.
Visiting Scholar in English, Stanford University, 2008-09
Dean of Faculty/Vice President for Academic Affairs, Middlebury College, 2003-07
Visiting Fellow, Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, 2002-03
Associate Dean of Faculty 1998-2000, Acting Dean of Faculty 2000-01, Acting
Provost 2001-02, Middlebury College
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor of English, 1989-present,
Middlebury College
Education:
Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania, 1989
M.A., English, University of Pennsylvania, 1984
B.A., with Honors in English, magna cum laude, Wellesley College, 1983
Books:
Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism. Forthcoming from
University of Michigan Press.
Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature.
Cambridge University Press, 1997. Paperback reissue, 2006.
Grants, Fellowships, Awards:
NEH /NINES Summer Institute, “Evaluating Digital Scholarship,” May 2011
Visiting Fellow, Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, 2002-3
Ada Howe Kent Grant, Middlebury College, 1994
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1988-9
Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, University of Pennsylvania, 1986
Dean’s Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1986-7
University Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1983-4
Jacqueline Award in English Composition, Wellesley College, 1983
Mary C. Lyons Prize in Writing, Wellesley College, 1983
Lectures, Conference Talks, and Panels:
“Institutional and Public Policy Contexts in Higher Education. “ Panel discussion,
ADE (MLA) Summer Seminar West, Boulder, June 2012
“Everything Old is New Again: The Digital Past and the Humanistic Future.”
Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference, Seattle, January 2012.
http://web.duke.edu/~ves4/mla2012/Byerly-DigitalPast-HumanisticFuture.pdf
“Evaluating Digital Scholarship.” Presentation at Modern Language Association
(MLA) Pre-Convention Workshop, Seattle, January 2012.
http://wiki.mla.org/index.php/WORKSHOP_2012
“Performing Presence: Victorian Media and the Attenuation of the Self.” North
American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Conference, November 2011.
“Inside/Out: Rapid Transit and the Railway Perspective.” North American
Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Conference, November 2010.
“Humanities in the Digital Age.” Panel discussion with Steven Pinker and David
Thorburn. MIT, October 20, 2010. http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16703-humanitiesin-the-digital-age
“What Not to Save: The Future of Ephemera.” Media in Transition (MiT) 6
Conference, MIT, April 2009 http://web.mit.edu/commforum/mit6/papers/Byerly.pdf
“Signal Crossings: Railway Travel and Middle-Class Identity.” North American
Conference on British Studies (NACBS), November 2006
“Dickens and Virtual Travel.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference,
Washington, D.C., December 2005
“Are We There Yet? Victorian Travel as Virtual Reality.” North American
Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Conference, University of Virginia,
September 2005
“’A Prodigious Map Beneath His Feet’: Air Travel, Virtual Travel, and the
Panoramic Perspective.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies
Association (INCS) Conference, London, July 2003
“Virtual Travel and Victorian Culture.” Invited lecture, Oxford University, March
2003
"Travel and National Identity in Postcolonial England." GEMCS (Group for
Early Modern Culture Studies) Conference, Dallas, October 1995
"Women and Music in the Nineteenth-Century Novel." Invited lecture, Vassar
College, February 1995
Chair, session on "Imperial Tastes: Women, Gender, and Food in the British
Empire," Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Vassar College,
June 1993
"The Uses of Landscape." MLA (Modern Language Association) Conference,
San Francisco, December 1991
Articles and Book Chapters:
“Technologies of Travel in the Victorian Novel,” Oxford Handbook to Victorian
Literature, ed. Lisa Rodensky (Oxford UP, forthcoming)
“’A Prodigious Map Beneath His Feet’: Virtual Travel and the Panoramic
Perspective,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 29, Numbers 2-3
(June/September 2007): 151-69.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08905490701584643
“Accident or Murder? Intentionality, the Picturesque, and the Body of Thomas De
Quincey,” Nineteenth-Century Prose 29:2 (Fall 2002): 48-68.
"Rivers, Journeys, and the Construction of Place in Nineteenth-Century English
Literature," in Steven Rosendale, ed., The Greening of Literary Scholarship:
Literature, Theory, and the Environment. (Iowa University Press, 2002): 77-94.
"Effortless Art: The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Painting and Literature,"
Criticism 41, 3 (Summer 1999): 349-64.
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5001835662
"The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park
System," in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Harold
Fromm and Cheryll Glotfelty. (University of Georgia Press, 1996).
http://goo.gl/CgJSV
"Cathy Johnson," American Nature Writers, ed. John Elder, Vol. I (New York:
Scribner's, 1996): 425-38; "Lewis Thomas," American Nature Writers, ed. John
Elder, Vol. II (New York: Scribner's, 1996): 919-931.
"'The Masquerade of Existence': Thackeray's Theatricality," Dickens Studies
Annual 23: (1994): 259-86.
"From Schoolroom to Stage: Reading Aloud and the Domestication of Victorian
Theater," in Culture and Education in Victorian England, ed. Patrick Scott and
Pauline Fletcher (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1990): 125-41.
"'The Language of the Soul': George Eliot and Music," Nineteenth-Century
Literature, June 1989: 1-17. http://www.jstor.org/pss/3045104
Book Reviews:
Review of Peter Brooks, Realist Vision (Yale UP, 2005), English Studies in
Canada. Vol. 34, 2-3 (June/Sept 2008): 243-7.
Review of Julia Thomas, Pictorial Victorians: Inscription of Values in Word and
Image (Ohio UP, 2004), Victorian Studies 47.2 (Autumn 2005): 173-4.
Review of Delia da Sousa Correa, George Eliot, Music, and Victorian Culture
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Victorian Studies 47.1 (Winter 2005).
Review of Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women
Embrace the Living World (Chicago, 1998), Australasian Victorian Studies
Journal 5 (1999): 182-4.
Review Forum on Realism, Representation, and the Arts: "Response to George
Levine, James Heffernan, and Patricia O'Neill," Australasian Victorian Studies
Journal 4 (1998): 148-50.
Professional Memberships and Service
Coordinating Committee, Alliance for the Advancement of Liberal Arts Colleges
(AALAC), 2010-12
ACLS New Faculty Fellows Selection Committee, 2009-11
NEASC Visiting Committee for Colby College Reaccreditation, 2007
ACLS-Teagle Working Group on Liberal Education; joint author, “Student
Learning and Faculty Research: Connecting Teaching and Scholarship,” 2007
http://www.acls.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/Programs/ACLSTeagle_Teacher_Scholar_White_Paper.pdf
Modern Language Association (MLA)
American Association of University Women (AAUW)