Associate Professor
PDL A-508
543-7881
Email: laporte@u.washington.edu
B.A., Stanford University, 1994
M.A., University of Virginia, 1997
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2004
Nineteenth-century literature and literary theory, Victorian poetry
My scholarship is grounded in 19th C. British literature and culture, especially Victorian poetry and poetics. I am particularly interested in the relationship between genre and cultural value in the legacy of Romanticism: why certain genres are valued over others, and under what conditions those genres and relative values evolve. My own work often investigates these questions in light of nineteenth-century gender ideology and religion. My book, Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible,![[new window]](/engl/img/2ndwindow.gif "opens new window")
concerns the relationship between Victorian poetry and Biblical hermeneutics. Presently, I am working on theoretical questions surrounding Shakespeare's quasi-religious place in Victorian literary culture.
