Tina Gianquitto

I teach courses in literature and the environment, American literature, and literature and the history of nineteenth-century science, especially the emergence of evolutionary thought and Darwinism.  Most of my research focuses on 19th century American women writers, nature study, and the scientific tradition. I am particularly interested in examining the intellectual and aesthetic experience of nature for women in nineteenth-century America and investigating the linguistic, perceptual, and scientific systems that were available to women to describe those experiences. I have been engaged in a project on Darwin’s female scientific correspondents, in which investigate women’s participation in formal and informal scientific networks. I received my degrees in literature from Columbia University (Ph.D., 2002; M.Phil., 1996; M.A., 1993; B.A., 1991). When I’m not reading about the outside world, I like to be outside, climbing, skiing, or hiking through the mountains with my dog.

Curriculum Vitae

Courses Taught

LAIS 305 American Literature: Colonial Period to Present
LAIS 404 Women, Literature, and Society
LAIS 412 Literature & the Environment

Other
Nature, Culture, and Technology
The Colorado River, Literature of Scientific Discovery
Darwin and Evolutionary Thought

Scholarship

Book

“Good Observers of Nature”: American Women and the Scientific Study of the Natural World, 1820-1885. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Edited Volume

America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U.S. Literary Culture. Athens: University of Georgia Press (forthcoming Spring 2014)

Articles

“Woman and Scientific Correspondence Networks” The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, forthcoming 2016)

“Evolutionary Narratives: Darwin’s Botany and American Periodical Literature” in Darwin Inspired Learning, edited by Carolyn Boulter, Michael Reiss, Dawn Sanders (Sense Publishers, U.K., 2015)

“Criminal Botany: Progress, Degeneration, and Darwin’s Insectivorous Plants” in American’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U.S. Culture (University of Georgia Press, 2014)

“Introduction: Textual Responses to Darwinian Theory in the U.S. Scene,” with Lydia Fisher, in American’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U.S. Culture (University of Georgia Press, 2014)

“Botanical Smuts and Hermaphrodites: Lydia Becker, Darwin’s Botany, and Education Reform” Isis, 104:2 (2013): 250-277.

“The Return to the Primitive: Evolution, Atavism, and Socialism in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.” Critical Insights: Nature and the Environment, edited by Scott Slovic (Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2012).

“Of Spiders, Ants, and Carnivorous Plants: Domesticity and Darwin in Mary Treat’s Home Studies in Nature.” In Coming Into Contact: Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice, edited by Annie Merrill Ingram, Ian Marshall, Daniel J. Phillipon, and Adam Sweeting (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007): 239-49.

“Introduction” and “Notes” to Call of the Wild and White Fang, by Jack London (New York: Michael J. Fine, 2003): xiii-xxvi; 293-297.

“‘The Noble Designs of Nature’: God, Science, and the Picturesque in Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours.” In Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Essays on Rural Hours and Other Works, edited by Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001): 169-90.

Encyclopedia Entries

“Mary Treat.” In Early American Nature Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia, edited by Daniel Patterson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008).

“Aldo Leopold.” In Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, edited by Carl Mitcham, v. 2 (New York: MacMillan Reference Books, 2005): 1001-03

“Mary Treat.” In Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, edited by Carl Mitcham, v. 3 (New York: MacMillan Reference Books, 2005): 1743-45.

Reviews

“From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America.” By Kimberly Hamlin. National Council on Science Education. (website)

“Clandestine Marriage: Botany and Romantic Culture.” By Theresa M. Kelley. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 20:3 (2013): 698-99.

“‘Our Sister’s Keepers’: Nineteenth-Century Benevolence Literature by American Women.” CHOICE. 43: 6 (February 2006): 1018.

“Reading the Roots: American Nature Writing before Walden.” Journal of Agricultural History. 79: 4 (Fall 2005): 501-02.