oconnor@panix.com
Employment:
Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, July 2001-present
Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, July 1995-June 2001
Education:
Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, August 1995
M.A., English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, May 1992
B.A., English, Highest Honors, Highest Distinction, University of California, Berkeley, 1990
Academic Honors:
Rackham One-Term Fellowship,1995
Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Michigan,1994-1995
Lora Hutchins Heberle Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Critical Writing,1994
Mellon Candidacy Fellowship, University of Michigan, 1993
Regents Fellowship, University of Michigan,1990-95
Lora Hutchins Heberle Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Critical Writing, 1991
Phi Beta Kappa, University of California, Berkeley, 1989
Books:
Raw Material: Producing Pathology in Victorian Culture (Duke University Press, 2000)
Articles:
"Preface for a Post-Postcolonial Criticism." Forthcoming, Victorian Studies
"Epitaph for the Body Politic." Science as Culture 11 (September 2002): 379-88. (Commissioned review essay)
"Reading The Biographer's Tale." Victorian Studies 44(3) (Spring 2002): 379-88.
"Camera Medica: Towards a Morbid History of Photography." History of Photography 23:3 (Autumn 1999): 1-14. (Invited contribution to a special issue on medicine and photography)
"Fractions of Men: Engendering Amputation in Victorian Culture." Comparative Studies in Society and History 39:4 (October 1997): 742-777.
"Pictures of Health: Medical Photography and the Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa." Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (April 1995): 535-572.
Reviews:
Review of Anna Krugovoy Silver's Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Forthcoming, Victorian Studies.
Review of Michael Sappol's Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. Forthcoming, Isis.
Review of Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism. Knowledge@Wharton, 2002.
Review of Sam Williams' Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. Knowledge@Wharton, 2002.
Review of Jessica Snyder Sachs' Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death. Isis 93 (June 2002):350-51.
Review of E.O. Wilson's The Future of Life. Knowledge@Wharton, 2002.
Review of Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Forthcoming, Knowledge@Wharton.
Review of Doron Swade's The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer. Knowledge@Wharton, 2/2002.
Review of James B. Murray's Wireless Nation: The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America. Knowledge@Wharton, December 2001.
Review of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Knowledge@Wharton, September 2001.
Review of John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor's Affluenza: An All-Consuming Epidemic. Knowledge@Wharton, August 2001.
Review of Linus Torvalds' Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. Knowledge@Wharton, August 2001.
Review of Pekka Himanen's The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Knowledge@Wharton, July 2001.
Review of Jack Beatty's Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America. Knowledge@Wharton, June 2001.
Review of Ronald Thomas' Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science. Albion 33:4 (Winter 2001): 683-84.
Review of Esther Wachs Book's Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman. Knowledge@Wharton, October 2000.
Review of Norman Augustine and Kenneth Adelman's Shakespeare in Charge. Knowledge@Wharton, March 2000.
Review of Catherine Judd's Bedside Seductions: Nursing and the Victorian Imagination, 1830-1880. Victorian Studies 42 (Spring 1999): 501-502.
Review of Kathy Alexis Psomiades' Beauty's Body: Femininity and Representation in British Aestheticism. Victorian Studies 42:1 (Autumn 1998/1999): 121-123.
Review of Dennis Todd's Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England. Isis 89:1 (March 1998): 138-139.
Review of Helen Small's Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865. Victorian Studies 40:3 (Spring 1997): 579-580.
Review of Robin B. Colby's "Some Appointed Work to Do": Women and Vocation in the Fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell. Victorian Studies 39:3 (Spring 1996): 427-429.
Papers Presented:
"Work in Progress." Delivered at the Faculty-Student Colloquium, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, March 2001. By invitation.
"One Woman's Text and a Critique of the Critique of Imperialism." Delivered at the Delaware Valley British History Seminar, April 2000. By invitation.
"Pictures of Health: Medical Photography and the Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa." Delivered at the Department of Women's Studies, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, December 1999. By invitation.
"Prosthetics, Plastics, and Gender: 1880-1940." Delivered at the Department of Women's Studies, Villanova University, March 1999. By invitation.
"Critical Contamination: The Case of Asiatic Cholera." Delivered at the Department of English, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, January 1999. By invitation.
"A Few Wood Men." Delivered at the Society for Literature and Science, University of Florida, November, 1998.
"Stumped: Thinking Amputation in Victorian America." Delivered at the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA, October 1998. By invitation.
"Breast Cancer, Mass Culture, Gender." Delivered at the Department of Women's Studies, Case Western Reserve University, February, 1998. By invitation.
"Critical Contamination: The Case of Asiatic Cholera." Delivered at the Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, September, 1997. By invitation.
"Jumpy Stumps and Working Stiffs: Toward a Genealogy of Prosthesis." Delivered at Body Parts/Partial Bodies, University of Pennsylvania, April 1997.
"Monstrosity/Machinery/Modernity; or, Object Lessons in Victorian Selfhood." Delivered at the History and Sociology of Science Department, University of Pennsylvania, February, 1997. By invitation.
"Deformitomania: Deformity and Dependency in Victorian Culture." Delivered at the Addiction and Culture Conference, Claremont, CA, February, 1996.
"Fractions of Men: Engendering Amputation in Victorian Culture." Delivered at the History of Science Department, Harvard University, January 1995. By invitation.
"Some Assembly Required: Identity, Integrity and Prosthesis in Victorian Culture." Delivered at NEMLA, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1994.
Respondent, panel on "Madness, Gender, and Sexuality in Literature." MMLA, Minneapolis, MN, November, 1993.
"'A Pleasure to be Indulged in with Caution': Gender and Prophylaxis in Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa." Delivered at the annual meeting of the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, March 1993.
Academic Service:
2001-2002:
Creator of Web site for
King's College Program
2000-2001:
Graduate Executive Committee
Committee to Evaluate Structure of Graduate Program
Co-Coordinator of English Department Dissertation Workshop, with Professor Bob Perelman
Graduate Admissions Committee
1999-2000:
Faculty Liaison for English Help Computer Support Team
Committee to Nominate English Department Chair
Graduate Admissions Committee
Co-Coordinator of English Department Dissertation Workshop, with Professor Bob Perelman
1998-1999:
On Leave
1997-1998:
Co-Coordinator of English Department Dissertation Workshop, with Professor Peter Conn
Penn-in-London Study Abroad Program, with Professors Lynda Hart and Michael Gamer
Undergraduate Executive Committee
English Department Executive Committee
Health Professions Advisory Board
Panelist, "Preparing for a Campus Interview," Sponsored by Career Planning and Placement,
University of Pennsylvania, January 1998
Panelist, "Can You Live Without Getting a Ph.D.?" Sponsored by Career Planning and Placement,
University of Pennsylvania, February, 1998
Judge, Haney Prize (awarded to outstanding essay by an English Honors student)
Panelist, "Interviewing for Academic Jobs: What to Expect" at Ninth Annual
Academic Career
Conference, University of Pennsylvania, September 1997
1996-1997:
Graduate Executive Committee
Judge, Patrick Day Essay Contest (to outstanding essay by a graduate student in English)
Designed new 19th century major concentration with Professor Michael Gamer
Chair, Committee to Revise Victorian 50-Book List
Junior Victorianist Hiring Committee
Graduate Admissions Committee
Judge, Diane Hunter Dissertation Award (to outstanding dissertation in English)
Health Professions Advisory Board