Shalyn Claggett received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University, specializing in nineteenth-century British literature. Her current book project, The Science of Character in Victorian Literature and Culture, uses the popular nineteenth-century science of phrenology to track the convergence between narrative and scientific concepts of character. Her publications on nineteenth-century literature include “Harriet Martineau’s Material Rebirth” (Victorian Literature and Culture), “George Eliot’s Interrogation of Physiological Future Knowledge” (forthcoming in SEL), and “Narcissism and the Conditions of Self-Knowledge in ‘The Jolly Corner’” (Henry James Review). She teaches classes on Victorian poetry and prose, the nineteenth-century British novel, and literary theory.

