Education
Ph.D. English, University of Connecticut, May 2013.
M.A. English, University of Connecticut, May 2007.
B.A. English, Loyola University, New Orleans, May 2004.
About Mary
Mary Isbell is an Associate Professor of English at The University of New Haven. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century literature and culture, narratology, scholarly text encoding, and open educational practices. Her work has appeared in Victorian Literature and Culture, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Scholarly Editing, and Victoriographies. With Matt Wranovix, she served as PI on the Open Pedagogy Project and she is working with a team of humanities faculty to build The Connected Core, an initiative to remove the barriers that often stop professionally minded students from engaging with the arts and humanities. Mary's current project is Searching for Wonder, an openly licensed book designed to support those who want to teach literature with student-selected texts. She also leads the team of faculty and developers building WonderCat, a relational database of story experiences that users can peruse and expand by sharing their own experiences. The tool is an alternative to recommender systems that predict user preferences based on demographics and user behavior. Designed for use in and out of the classroom, WonderCat encourages agency and democratic engagement with scholarly expertise.
Research and Teaching Interests
Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Theater History, Victorian Studies, Maritime Studies, Book History, Digital Humanities, Narrative Theory, Composition Studies
Recent Publications
- “How Do We Teach Literature When Students Won’t Read What We Assign?” The C19 Podcast. https://soundcloud.com/c19podcast. Forthcoming Summer 2025
- With Lauren Boasso, “The End of ‘Victorian Literature’?” Victoriographies. Forthcoming Summer 2025.
- Searching for Wonder: Teaching Literature with Student-Selected Texts. West Haven: University of New Haven Press, 2025. https://unewhaven.pressbooks.pub/searchingforwonder/.
Recent Presentations
- “Replacing the Reading List with WonderCat: Building a Relational Database of Reading Experiences with Students.” Connecticut Digital Humanities Conference. February 2025.
- “Creative and Inclusive Approaches to Student Recruitment.” Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Annual Meeting. Austin. November 2024.
- With Angus Fletcher, Tristan Onofre, Gina Beattie, Monica Dobson, and Aferdita Emini. “Searching for Wonder, or, Teaching Literature with Student-Selected Texts.” Open Ed. Providence. October 2024. (recording)