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Vanessa Steinroetter

Vanessa Steinroetter

Professor
English
College of Arts and Sciences
Contact
Morgan Hall
Rm 111
1700 SW College Ave
Topeka, KS 66621-1117
Degrees & Certifications
Cath Unv Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Master of Arts
Univ of Nebraska at Lincoln, Doctor of Philosophy
Academic History

Washburn University, Professor, 2022-present; Associate Professor, 2017-2022; Assistant Professor, 2011-2017.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Teaching Assistant, 2007-2011.

Nebraska Wesleyan University, Adjunct Instructor, 2006-2007.

Catholic University of Eichstaett, Germany, Adjunct Instructor, 2005-2006.

Teaching
  • EN 208 VA, Professional Writing
  • EN 208 VB, Professional Writing
  • EN 331 A, American Literature since 1865
  • EN 361 A, World Literature since 1650
Scholarly Interests/Activities
Nineteenth-century American literature and print culture; literature of the American Civil War; periodical literature; history of the book; women's literature; American ethnic literatures; literature of the American West and the Great Plains
Career Accomplishments


Publications:

Journal Articles & Book Chapters:

  • “‘Painted for Posterity’: Guerrilla Violence and Irregular Warfare in Rebecca Harding Davis’ Civil War Writings.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance (accepted for publication in summer 2023).
  • “‘[T]o hold time and place together’: The Power of Material Objects in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Civil War Stories.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 49.7 (Fall 2020): 699–718. Invited contribution to a special issue on Rebecca Harding Davis.
  • “Vacant Chairs and Absent Bodies: Material Disruptions of Domestic Spaces in a Southern Scrapbook.” Mississippi Quarterly 71.4 (Fall 2017/18; published in December 2019): 423–438.
  • “Materiality in the Civil War Poetry of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman” in “This Mighty Convulsion”: Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War, edited by Tyler Hoffman and Christopher Sten. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, November 2019: 33–49.
  • “Unsettling Landscapes: Prairie Madness and EcoGothic Themes in U.S. Plains Literature,” Great Plains Quarterly 39.3 (Summer 2019): 291–310.
  • “Daughters of a Reading People: Representations of African American Girlhood and Female Literacy in the Christian Recorder” in Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, edited by Robin Cadwallader and Allison Giffen. London: Routledge, 2017: 52-70.
  •  "Walt Whitman in the Early Kansas Press," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 39.3 (Fall 2016): 182-193.
  • "Soldiers, Readers, and the Reception of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in Civil War America," Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History 8 (2016): 5-28.
  • "'Reading the List:' Casualty Lists and Civil War Poetry," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 59.1 (Spring 2013): 48-78.
  •  Chapter on Civil War literature in Civil War America: A Social and Cultural History, edited by Maggi Morehouse and Zoe Trodd. London: Routledge, October 2012.
  •  "'Pioneers! O Pioneers!' and Whitman's Early German Translators," 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 9 (2009). 
  • "The Politics of Humor: Max Cohnheim’s Columbia (1863-1873), a German Newspaper in the Nation’s Capital," American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, & Bibliography 19.1 (Spring 2009): 21-48.
  • "A Newly-Discovered Translation of Louisa May Alcott’s 'My Contraband' in a German American Newspaper," New England Quarterly 81.4 (December 2008): 703–713.

Conference Presentations (Selected):

  • “‘[P]eculiarities of guerrilla life in the bush’: Violence, Trauma, and Otherness in Thomas M. Goodman’s Civil War Captivity Narrative.” 2022 Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference, Santa Fe, October 19-22, 2022.
  • [“The Idea of the Borderlands in the Civil War Writings of Rebecca Harding Davis.” 2020 Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL) Conference, Fayetteville, April 2-5, 2020. Conference canceled due to COVID-19.]
  • “John Whittaker Watson’s ‘No Letter’ (1865): The ‘Vampyre Clutch’ of the Postal Worker and the Civil War Post Office.” 2019 MMLA Conference, Civil War Caucus, Chicago, November 14-16, 2019.
  • “Vacant Chairs and Absent Bodies: Material Disruptions of Domestic Spaces in a Southern Poetry Scrapbook.” 2018 MMLA Conference, Civil War Caucus, Kansas City, November 16-18, 2018.
  • “Revisiting Melville’s Skepticism toward Reconciliation in ‘Magnanimity Baffled.’” 2017 MMLA Conference, Civil War Caucus, Cincinnati, November 10-12, 2017. 
  • “Revisiting Prairie Madness: Unsettling Landscapes and the EcoGothic in Plains Literature.” 2017 Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference, Minneapolis, October 26-28, 2017.
  • "The Mean Face of War: Moral Borderlines and Sectional Conflict in the Civil War Stories of Rebecca Harding Davis." MMLA Convention, St. Louis, MO, November 10-13, 2016.
  • “Seeking to the Fill the Void: Unsettling Objects and the Collecting Impulse in Civil War Literature.” C19 Conference, State College, PA, March 17-20, 2016.
  • “‘Delicate souvenirs de la guerre’: Material Traces of the Civil War in Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘David Gaunt.’” American Literature Association (ALA), Boston, May 21-24, 2015.
  • “‘A Strange Mixture of War and Dante and Robinson Crusoe’: Soldiers’ Reading and Autobiographical Accounts of the American Civil War." American Literature Association (ALA) Symposium on "War and American Literature," New Orleans, October 10-12, 2013.
  • "Walt Whitman’s Western 'Jaunt' and Early Reception in the (Mid-)Western Press." Reception Study Society (RSS) Conference, Milwaukee, September 26-29, 2013.
  • "A 'Great Army of Letters': Letter Writing and Patriotic Duty in Women’s Literature of the Civil War." Fifth Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW), Denver, October 10-13, 2012.
  • "Soldiers, Readers, and the Reception of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in Civil War America." American Literature Association (ALA) Conference, San Francisco, May 25-28, 2012.
  • "Dead Letters, Absent Bodies, and the Uncertainty of (Re-)Union: Representations of Letter Reading in American Literature of the Civil War." Reception Study Society (RSS) Conference, Maryville, MO, September 2011.
  • “Annotating Whitman’s Civil War Correspondence in a Digital Environment.” Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) Conference, Philadelphia, October 15-17, 2010.
  • “Reading for Respectability: The Free Black Community in Antebellum Philadelphia and the Culture of Reading.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2009.

Other Accomplishments and Awards:

  • Editorial Advisory Board, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, August 2015-present
  • Invited contributor to the companion website for the Bedford Anthology of American Literature Vol. I, Second Edition.
  • Contributing editor for the Walt Whitman Archive
  • Caleb Loring, Jr. Fellow at the Boston Athenaeum, 2010-2011
  • P.E.O. Scholar Award, 2009-2010

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2015-2016

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2016-2017

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2017-2018

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2018-2019

Certificate of Inclusive Teaching and Learning 2018-2019

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2020-2021

Certificate of Teaching and Learning 2021-2022

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