Theresa Dougal

Professor of English (1994)

Education

• B.A., Boston College
• M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago

Contact

Email: tdougal@moravian.edu
Phone: 610-861-1389
Office: Zinzendorf Hall, Room 301

Areas of Research and/or Expertise

Early 19th-century British and American literature; Mary Wollstonecraft; literature and the environment; the art of poetry; women's diaries and travel writing, women's studies.

Biography

Dr. Dougal teaches courses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, nineteenth-century American literature, the study of poetry, and "literature and the moral life," with an emphasis on environmental issues. She has also taught courses on travel writing and women's diaries, reflecting her scholarly interest in life writing and in the intersection between gender and genre. Dr. Dougal is advisor to the Zinzendorf Literary Society and is a recipient of the Lindback Teaching Award and the Golden Apple Award for leadership and excellence in teaching.

"I am always seeing myself in my students. Different students, different aspects of myself, from various stages of my life. So in every classroom situation I try to imagine how I would be perceiving the event, as a learner, and I adjust my tactic accordingly. I am particularly sensitive to the need to create an environment in which all students feel comfortable sharing their responses to the material at hand. If I can make what I teach seem relevant to my students, then they are more likely to become enthusiastic about the literature we read together, its beauty and the human truths it evokes and reveals. I find that students are particularly open to analyzing a wide variety of both canonical and non canonical literary and cultural texts, so together we push the boundaries, examining the works of people of different races, classes, ethnicities, genders, often viewing them in the light of pressing social concerns. I have found that an interdisciplinary approach to English Studies has enhanced our efforts."

Publications

• “Sustainable Communities: Teaching the Environment in the English Classroom,” Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Vol. 5, No. 2, Summer 2016.
• “Mary Wollstonecraft on Screen: Accuracy and Effect in the 21st Century Biopic,” West Virginia University Philological Papers, Vol. 55, Fall, 2012.
• Review of Teaching British Women Writers 1750-1900, ed. by Jeanne Moskal and ShannonWooden, Victorian Studies (48), 2006.
• Review of Women Alone: Spinsters in England 1660-1850, by Bridget Hill, The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual 14 (2003): 500-504.
• “Teaching Conduct or Telling a New Tale?: Priscilla Wakefield and The Juvenile Traveller,” Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in Their Works, Lives, and Culture, Ed. Linda V. Troost, 1999.
• "'Strange Farrago of Public, Private Follies:' Piozzi, Diary, and the Travel Narrative," Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, 10 (1999): 195-215.