Peter J. Capuano

Assistant Professor

Degrees and Institutions

Ph.D., University of Virginia
B.A., Holy Cross

Areas of Specialization

Victorian Literature and Culture
Dickens Studies (Dickens Project Faculty)
The Long Nineteenth Century
Science and Literature
History and Theory of the Novel
Body Studies

Monograph in Progress

Changing Hands: Industrialization, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Body in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Selected Publications

"Networked Manufacture in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley." Victorian Studies 55:2 (Winter 2013): 231-242.

"On Sir Charles Bell's The Hand, 1833." BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net.

"Biography of William Makepeace Thackeray." Critical Insights: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Ed. Sheldon Goldfarb: Hackensack: Salem Press/EBSCO, 2011. 16-21.

"Handling the Perceptual Politics of Identity in Great Expectations," Dickens Quarterly 27: 3 (September 2010):185-208.

"At the Hands of Becky Sharp: (In)Visible Manipulation and Vanity Fair,"Victorians Institute Journal  38: 1 (2008): 167-191.

"An Objective Aural-Relative in Middlemarch," SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 47: 4 (Autumn 2007): 921-941.

"Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved,"  African American Review 37:1 (Spring 2003): 95-103.  Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism (Gale) 194: 1 (2005): 237-242.

Recent Papers

"Novel Handwriting."  North American Victorian Studies Association. Pasadena 2013.

"Surface Reading by Hand: The Manual Turn in Nineteenth-Century British Literature."  Special Session.  MLA. Boston 2013.

"Networked Manufacture in Shirley."  North American Victorian Studies Association.  Madison. 2012

"Puppetry and Play in Vanity Fair." North American Victorian Studies Association. Nashville 2011.

"Prophetic Vision in Daniel Deronda." Victorian Futures Conference. The Dickens Universe. Santa Cruz 2011.

"Wuthering Heights and 21st-Century Undergraduates." The Brontë Festival. Joslyn Castle and Joslyn Art Museum Trust. Omaha 2011.

"(In)Visible Manipulation in Vanity Fair." Invited speaker to the annual meeting of the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario: Victorian Variations on Hands, Handling, and Underhanded Behaviour. Toronto 2011.

"Sacred Kinship: The Hand and Banner in George Eliot," Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.  Austin 2010.

"Handling Animality in Dickens,"  The Dickens Symposium.  Providence 2009. 

"Embodiment in George Eliot's Realist Aesthetic," NeMLA.  Boston 2009.

"Judaism, Kabbalah, and the Tensility of Sympathy in Daniel Deronda,"  International Conference on Narrative.  Austin 2008.

"The Material Thackeray" (Panel Co-organizer) North American Victorian Studies Association 2007.

Awards/ Honors

Research
Edgar F. Shannon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Virginia 2009-2010
Thomas Griffis Prize for Literary Criticism, University of Virginia 2009
Presidential Doctoral Fellowship, University of Virginia 2001-2006
Wylie and Lucy Sypher Scholarship, Bread Loaf School of English 2000

Teaching
Dr. Frank Finger All-University Award for Teaching, University of Virginia 2006
Seven Society Honoree for Classroom Excellence, University of Virginia 2005
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, University of Virginia 2005-2006

Courses Taught

Victorian Literature
Charles Dickens Seminar
The Victorian Novel
The English Novel 1700-1900
Race and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Nineteenth-Century Science and Literature
Prosthetic People: Literature, Film, and the Body
Gender Criticisms and Theory

Affiliations

Modern Language Association
North American Victorian Studies Association
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship)
Digital Humanities Summer Institute (University of Victoria)
The Dickens Project and Universe

Peer Review Service

Manuscript Reviewer for Routledge
Victorians Institute Journal