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.Ā
Her current book project,Ā "The Chronicle and the Narrative of the Group,ā 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.Ā Although the chronicle has often been dismissed as unserious,Ā itsĀ apparent formlessness offers an innovative approach to the nineteenth-century novelās classically tense negotiation between individual needs and group membership.Ā Ā
Publications
Books
- The Chronicle and the Narrative of the GroupĀ (Current Book Project)
- Ā (Cambridge University Press, May 2015)Ā
Articles
- āCharlotte M. Yonge and the Realist Tradition.āĀ Charlotte M. Yonge: Writing the Victorian Age. Palgrave Macmillan. (forthcoming)
- āAnti-Individualism in the Victorian Family Chronicle.āĀ NOVEL: A Forum on FictionĀ 53.2 (August 2020): 213ā234.
- āBehind the Victorian Novel: ScottāsĀ Chronicles.āĀ Victorian StudiesĀ 61.2. āSpecial Issue: Papers and Responses from the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the North American Victorian Studies Association.ā āReading Outward,ā Talia Schaffer, ed.Ā Victorian StudiesĀ 61.2. (Winter 2019): 232-39.
- āā āSpecial Keywords Issue.ā Rachel Ablow and Daniel Hack, eds.Ā Victorian Literature and Culture. 46.3/4 (Fall/Winter 2018): 742-745.
- āInconvenient Husbands and Superfluous Wives.ā āSpecial Issue: Extended Families.ā Kelly Hager and Talia Schaffer, eds.Ā Victorian Review. 32.2 (Fall 2013): 30-33.
- āThe Plot of Bigamous Return,āĀ RepresentationsĀ 123 (Summer 2013): 87-116.
- āThe Discipline of Tears inĀ The Old Curiosity Shop,āĀ Dickens Studies AnnualĀ 42 (2011): 123-141.
- āĀŁ“Ē³Ü±ō-³¾²¹³Ł±š²õ:ĢżDavid Copperfieldās Angelic Bigamy,āĀ Victorian StudiesĀ 52.2 (Winter 2010): 191-218. (Nominated by the editors ofĀ Victorian StudiesĀ for the Donald Gray Prize for the Best Essay Published in the Field of Victorian Studies.)
Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries
- āB¾±²µ²¹³¾²ā.āĀ The Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction, ed. Kevin Morrison (McFarland & Co., 2018).
- Review of Rebecca RainofāsĀ The Victorian Novel of Adulthood:Ā Plot and Purgatory in Fictions of Maturity, inĀ Victorian StudiesĀ 59.3 (Spring 2017): 524-25.
- Review of Rae GreinerāsĀ Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, inĀ Wordsworth CircleĀ 44.4 (Autumn 2013): 240-41.
- Review of Hilary SchorāsĀ Curious Subjects: Women and the Trials of Realism, inĀ Nineteenth-Century LiteratureĀ 68.3 (Dec. 2013): 433-35.
- Review of Kelly HagerāsĀ Dickens and the Rise of Divorce, inĀ Journal of British StudiesĀ 50.2 (April 2011): 513-514.