Associate Professor
University Hall 5039
(205) 934-8574
Research and Teaching Interests: Victorian literature and culture, history and theory of the novel, history of cinema
Office Hours: By appointment
Education:
- B.A., University of Chicago, English
- M.A., University of Virginia, English
- Ph.D., University of Virginia, English
Dr. Siegel’s research focuses on the evolution of the British novel in relation to Victorian life and culture. His book, Charity and Condescension, looks at the way that Victorian writers worried about the relationship that charity created between rich and poor; in the face of these worries, novelists, poets, and social workers struggled to imagine new forms and rituals of charity that would be free from condescension. Lately, Dr. Siegel has written about the formal aspects of serial publication, and about different topics in film history.
Although a fierce chess player, Dr. Siegel is highly sentimental. He has been known to get choked up in class while reading passages aloud from Charles Dickens or Christina Rossetti, embarrassing himself and creating an awkward situation for his students.
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Recent Courses
- The 19th-Century British Novel
- Film and Narrative
- Seminar: Charles Dickens
- Victorian Poetry
- Detective Fiction
- British and Irish Literature, 1800-present
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Select Publications
Books
- Charity and Condescension: Victorian Literature and the Dilemmas of Philanthropy (Ohio University Press, 2012).
Book Chapters
- "Losing for Profit," in Middlemarch in the Twenty-First Century, Karen Chase, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Articles
- “Finding Form in David Copperfield: The Architectural Installment,” Dickens Studies Annual 48 (2017): 121-44.
- "Griffith, Dickens, and the Politics of Composure," PMLA 124 (No. 2, March 2009).
- “Preacher’s Vigil, Landlord’s Watch: Charity by the Clock in Adam Bede,” Novel 39 (No. 1, Fall 2005).