“Natural History and the Novel: Dilatoriness and Length in the
19th-Century Novel of Everyday Life,” Theories of the Novel Now
Conference, Providence, RI, November 2007.
“Trollope’s Everyday: Natural History and Description in the
Barsetshire Series,” North American Victorian Studies Association
Conference, Victoria, British Columbia, October 2007.
“Mary Mitford’s Paranaturalism: Amateur Narratives of
Natural History.” INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century
Society), Kansas City, MO, April 2007
“Trollope and the Everyday.” Annual Keynote Lecture.
Trollope Society of North America, New York, NY, October 2006.
“Stilled Habitats: Mitford, White, and Paranaturalist Time,”
North American Victorian Studies Conference, Purdue University,
September 2006.
“Stillness: Mitford, White, Austen,” Narrative Conference,
Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Louisville, KY,
March 2005.
“Reorienting the Scientific Frontier: Victorian Tide-pools and
Literary Realism,” North American Victorian Studies Association
(NAVSA), Toronto, Ontario, October 2004.
“Natural History, Regimes of Induction, and the Victorian
Detail.” ‘What’s New in Victorian Studies?’ Conference, City
University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY, May 2004.
“Prospect and Particularity: A Genealogy of the Victorian
Detail,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA),
Bloomington, IN, October 2003.
“Pansies and Faded Rosebuds: Austen’s Blooming Heroines Reworked,”
Modern Language Association, New York, NY, December 2002.
“Gilbert White and the Practice of Literary Detail,” Science and
Literature Studies (SLS) Conference, Pasadena, CA, October
2002.
“Austen’s Particularities: A Natural History of the Detail in
Emma,” Narrative Conference, Society for the Study of Narrative
Literature, Michigan State University, MI, April 2002.
“Perception and Natural History: Or, How to Know What You See,”
Narrative Conference, Society for the Study of Narrative
Literature, Rice University, Houston, TX, March 2001.
“Fascinated in Spite of Herself: Organic Realism and George
Eliot’s Adam Bede.” University of California, Riverside, October,
2000.
“Taxonomical Cures: Herbalist Medicine and Elizabeth Gaskell’s
Realism,” Victorians
Institute, Columbia, SC, October 2000.
“Seaweeds and Sorrel: Eliot, Courtship, and Taxonomical
Realism,” Modern
Language
Association, Chicago, IL, December 1999.
“Scientific Taxonomy and Courtship Narratives,” Experience and
Experiment: New York
University Victorian-Edwardian & Eighteenth-Century Studies
Group Conference, New York, NY, February 1998.
“Lovers Walk: Public and Private Pleasures in the
Eighteenth-Century Garden,” Anonymity Conference, Center for
Literary and Cultural Studies, Harvard University, March 1997.
“Improving Grounds, Improving Complexions: Austen, Whately, and
the Landscapes of Courtship,” Modern Language Association,
Washington, DC, December 1996.
“The Sexual System: Linnaean Botany and the Later
Eighteenth-Century Novel,” Northeast Association for
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Worcester, MA, September
1996.
“Traversing the Bloom: Representing Girlhood in
Henry James’ The Awkward Age and Edith Wharton’s The House of
Mirth,” American Studies Association, Nashville, TN, October
1994.