Director of Undergraduate Studies & Internships Program, & Associate Professor
penninhl@jmu.edu
Contact Info
Spring 2026 Office Hours
Tues. 9:30AM - 12:30PM online
Office: Keezell 405
Specialization
Nineteenth-century British literature, Victorian fiction, autobiography, narrative theory, theory of the novel
Education
Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis
M.A., Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis
B.A., English and Hispanic Studies, The College of William and Mary
Book
Fictional Selves: Creating Identity in the Victorian Fictional Autobiography. University of Missouri. 2018.
Journal/Articles/Essays
“A Biography in Bits and Pieces: Selling Ethel Dickens in the Periodical Press.” In: Life Writing and the Nineteenth Century Literary Market (Ed. Sean Grass). Edinburgh UP: November 2024. (URL: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-life-writing-and-the-nineteenth-century-literary-market.html) Awarded an Honorable Mention for the David Paroissien Prize, 2025, by the Dickens Society.
"'It is Enough': Caring Through the Gap." Narrative, 31.3 (October 2023): pp. 235-254. URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/30/article/908400"'
Heidi L. Pennington: 19 Cents Q&A Interview. Blog of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, April 2023.
“Interpreting the Labor and Legacy of the Independent Literary Typist; or, The Typing of Ethel Kate Dickens.” Victorian Literature and Culture (journal of Cambridge UP). 50.2 (summer 2022): 385-416.
“Ethel Kate Dickens.” Biographical essay in the “Featured New Women” column and “New Women Who’s Who Gallery” of The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies. Issue X, 2019. URL: http://www.thelatchkey.org/Latchkey10/featured10.htm#EKD
“Life, Death, and Identity in The Lifted Veil: George Eliot’s Experiments in First-Person Fiction” in Critical Insights: George Eliot, Ed. Katie Peel. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. 2016.
"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Esther? Reading Bleak House as Fictional Autobiography.” Victorians Institute Journal 41 (2013).
“‘But why should readers be made to feel…’: Repulsing Readerly Sympathy for Ethical Ends in the Victorian Realist Novel.” Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry 7.19 (Fall 2013).
“Reading Narrative Truth through the Absence of Narrative Awareness in Wilkomirski’s Fragments.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 28.1 (Summer 2013).
