English Department Faculty
Maia McAleavey
Associate Professor; Director of English Literature Core
Maia McAleavey
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S409
Telephone: 617-552-3728
Email: maia.mcaleavey@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Stanford University
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Research Interests
Nineteenth-century British literature and culture; the history of the novel; narrative analysis; and genre theory.
Biography
Maia McAleavey specializes in the history and form of the novel in English, with a particular focus on nineteenth-century British fiction. Her teaching and research attends closely to the formal features of narrative (plot, character systems, perspective, language) as well as to the cultural forces that shaped, and continue to shape, the perception and reception of those formal features.聽
Her current book project, The Life of the Group: Anti-Individualism and the Nineteenth-Century Chronicle,聽distinguishes a self-proclaimed genre of nineteenth-century writing, one that was often invoked in titles and authorial prefaces and that encompasses the writing of Walter Scott, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Anthony Trollope, and Margaret Oliphant, among many others.聽Although the chronicle has often been dismissed as unserious,聽its聽apparent formlessness offers an innovative approach to the nineteenth-century novel鈥檚 classically tense negotiation between individual needs and group membership.聽聽
Publications
Books
- The Life of the Group: Anti-Individualism and the Nineteenth-Century Chronicle聽(Current Book Project)
- 聽(Cambridge University Press, May 2015)聽
Articles
- 鈥淐arlingford In and Out of Time.鈥� Women鈥檚 Writing. (forthcoming)
- 鈥淔inding a Future in Our Violent Past.鈥� Victorian Studies. 65.3 (Spring 2023): 419-424
- 鈥淐harlotte M. Yonge and the Realist Tradition.鈥� Charlotte Mary Yonge: Writing the Victorian Age, eds. Clare Walker Gore, Clemence Schultze, and Julia Courtney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 281-298
- 鈥淎nti-Individualism in the Victorian Family Chronicle.鈥澛�NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction聽53.2 (August 2020): 213鈥�234
- 鈥淏ehind the Victorian Novel: Scott鈥檚聽Chronicles.鈥澛�Victorian Studies聽61.2. 鈥淪pecial Issue: Papers and Responses from the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the North American Victorian Studies Association.鈥� 鈥淩eading Outward,鈥� Talia Schaffer, ed.聽Victorian Studies聽61.2. (Winter 2019): 232-39
- 鈥溾�� 鈥淪pecial Keywords Issue.鈥� Rachel Ablow and Daniel Hack, eds.聽Victorian Literature and Culture. 46.3/4 (Fall/Winter 2018): 742-745
- 鈥淚nconvenient Husbands and Superfluous Wives.鈥� 鈥淪pecial Issue: Extended Families.鈥� Kelly Hager and Talia Schaffer, eds.聽Victorian Review. 32.2 (Fall 2013): 30-33
- 鈥淭he Plot of Bigamous Return,鈥澛�Representations聽123 (Summer 2013): 87-116
- 鈥淭he Discipline of Tears in聽The Old Curiosity Shop,鈥澛�Dickens Studies Annual聽42 (2011): 123-141
- 鈥沦辞耻濒-尘补迟别蝉:听David Copperfield鈥檚 Angelic Bigamy,鈥澛�Victorian Studies聽52.2 (Winter 2010): 191-218. (Nominated by the editors of聽Victorian Studies聽for the Donald Gray Prize for the Best Essay Published in the Field of Victorian Studies.)
Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries
- 鈥淏颈驳补尘测.鈥澛�The Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction, ed. Kevin Morrison (McFarland & Co., 2018)
- Review of Rebecca Rainof鈥檚聽The Victorian Novel of Adulthood:聽Plot and Purgatory in Fictions of Maturity, in聽Victorian Studies聽59.3 (Spring 2017): 524-25
- Review of Rae Greiner鈥檚聽Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, in聽Wordsworth Circle聽44.4 (Autumn 2013): 240-41
- Review of Hilary Schor鈥檚聽Curious Subjects: Women and the Trials of Realism, in聽Nineteenth-Century Literature聽68.3 (Dec. 2013): 433-35
- Review of Kelly Hager鈥檚聽Dickens and the Rise of Divorce, in聽Journal of British Studies聽50.2 (April 2011): 513-514