Assistant Professor of English
On Faculty since 2009
Office: Blanchard Hall 308
Phone: (630)752-5051
Email: richard.gibson@wheaton.edu
Education
The University of Virginia
Ph.D. English Language and Literature, 2009
M.A. English Language and Literature, 2006
Princeton University
B.A. English Literature, summa cum laude, 2002
About Richard Gibson
In a favorite turn of phrase, John Ruskin writes of turning youth “loose in the library.” My own education has often been marked by such an exhilarating freedom to roam among, sample from, and dive into poems, plays, novels, treatises, and tomes under the guidance of trusted teachers and mentors. I delight still in reading broadly—in opening Jose Saramago one morning and Homer the next—, and I am grateful for the opportunity that a liberal arts institution provides to express my wide-ranging interests in the courses I teach. As a professor, I take my role as a builder of libraries seriously, even as I endeavor to foster a spirit of adventurousness in the students who turn to me as a guide.
The work of an English professor often spills over into what we call “personal” life: we as a breed enjoy spending our “free time” reading, and the reading we do for or at work inspires in us new interests and enthusiasms. I thus read materials that count as “work” for fun, and my teaching and research have inspired new activities and pursuits. In particular, folks like Ruskin and Pater have warmed and informed my youthful interest in the pictorial arts, for which I now have a strong appetite. Thankfully, my spouse is more than willing to go along for if not initiate the ride to the museum, studio, or monument. She is likewise my regular companion at shows highbrow and low as well as in trying new recipes at home and restaurants abroad. Otherwise, I run; I poetize; I root for and often forgive the New York Mets.
Courses Taught
- ENGL 101 Classics of Western Literature
- ENGL 102 Modern Western Literature
- ENGL 215 Classical and Early British Literature
- ENGL 285 African Literature
- ENGL 355 The Romantic Period
- ENGW 103 Composition and Research
Membership in Professional Societies
- Modern Language Association
- Victorians Institute
Research
My research centers on nineteenth-century Britain, that volatile and endlessly fascinating period that confronted so many of the joys and challenges of modernity: speedy machines, bustling cities, global trade and colonial power, scientific breakthroughs and paradigm-shifting theories, new questions about the validity of Scripture, mass media, etc. My recent work has addressed the role of forgiveness in the work of several major nineteenth-century British
authors, including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and William Wordsworth. On the side, I have also been dabbling in nineteenth-century British “small talk” manuals—etiquette books that instruct readers about how to engage in conversation about topics such as the weather, one’s mother’s health, and the pleasantness of carriage-riding.
Publications
"Wordsworth's Liturgical Excursion" (article-in-progress)
"Counterfeit Phrases and Illusory Eschatons: Forgiveness in Jude the Obscure." The Hardy Review. (Forthcoming, Fall 2011)
"Evangelicalism." Oxford Bibliographies Online: Victorian Literature. Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming, Spring 2012; with Timothy Larsen)
"On Keeping Friendly Terms with Trollope." Vexed Encounters with Victorian Fiction. Eds. Leslie Haynsworth and Maria LaMonaca. (Collection under review)
“The Wretched Monk” [Translation of Charles Baudelaire’s “Le Mauvais Moine”], 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies 1.1 (2008): 46-47.
"Emily Dickinson's Rebellious Faith." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th Edition. Eds. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly Mays. New York: Norton, 2005. 2292-2301.
“Mr. [T. S.] Eliot’s Mistaken Date,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 65.1 (Autumn 2003): 101-105.
Reviews
"Poets Landscaping." Rev. of Abandoned Quarries, by John Lane, and Riffraff, by Stephen Cushman. Books and Culture. (Forthcoming, Spring 2012) [2000 words]
"Artist of the Portrait." Rev. of The Picture of Dorian Gray: Annotated and Uncensored Edition, by Oscar Wilde. Ed. Nicholas Frankel. Books and Culture July 2011. 35. [1500 words]
Conference Papers and Presentations
“Small Talk in Nineteenth-Century Etiquette and Fiction,” MLA Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2009
“Not so ‘dizzy’ after all? Second Impressions of ‘Mont Blanc,’” International Conference on Romanticism, Rochester, Michigan, 2008
“Thomas Hardy’s Non-forgiving Narratives,” International Conference of the Thomas Hardy Association, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007
“‘I couldn’t help it’: A Textual Study of ‘Difficult’ Pronouns in As I Lay Dying,” Contemporary Southern Literature and Culture Association Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, 2007
“Nonsense at the Back of the North Wind: George MacDonald’s Experiment,” Association of Literary Scholars and Critics Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005
“‘Neglected’ No Longer: The Victorians and the Wycliffite Bible,” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2005