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Allison Speicher

Professor
English
Biography

Dr. Speicher started teaching at Eastern in 2014 after earning her Ph.D. in 19th-century American literature. She teaches American and children’s literature and also enjoys working with Women’s and Gender Studies students. Her first book, Schooling Readers, explores the role fiction played in the evolution of public schooling. She is co-editor of the Country School Journal and secretary of the Stowe Society, as well as the faculty advisor of Eastern’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta.

Research Interests
  • representations of aging in nineteenth-century American literature
  • children's literature of the Golden Age
  • school stories
Of Note

Dr. Speicher's recent book, “Schooling Readers: Reading Common Schools in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction,” won the 2017 Country School Association of America Award for Scholarship and Artistry

Teaching Interests
  • 19th-century American short stories
  • representations of childhood in American literature
  • children’s literature of the Golden Age
Publications

"Fictionalizing the Country School," Country School Journal, January 2018, www.countryschooljournal.com/CSJ_Vol_6.html

“The School of One Scholar: Schoolmistress-Schoolboy Romance in the Nineteenth-Century School Story.” Children’s Literature Assoc. Quarterly, 2017.

Schooling Readers: Reading Common Schools in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. University of Alabama Press, 2016.

“The Schooldays of Topsy and Friday: Edward Everett Hale’s Revision of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Robinson Crusoe.” ESQ, 2016.

"Catharine Beecher Educates the West," Grating the Nutmeg podcast, gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com/episode-26-catharine-beecher-educates-the-west

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