SHEILA LIMING

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Associate Professor sliming@champlain.edu
Professional Writing Program 330.317.4880
Division of Communication and Creative Media SheilaLiming.com
CCM 244, Champlain College @seeshespeak
163 South Willard Street
Burlington, VT 05402

I. EDUCATION
Carnegie Mellon University: Pittsburgh, PA
PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies (2014)
Dissertation: “The Natural Woman: Writing Science and Sentimentality in Modern
America”

Carnegie Mellon University: Pittsburgh, PA

MA in Literary and Cultural Studies (2007)

College of Wooster: Wooster, OH

BA in English and Women’s Studies (2005)
Cum Laude

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Champlain College: Burlington, VT
Associate Professor of Writing (Fall 2020 – present)

University of North Dakota: Grand Forks, ND

Assistant Professor of English (Fall 2014 – present)
Associate Professor of English (promoted with tenure April 2020)

II. RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITY

BOOKS
What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books
University of Minnesota Press, May 2020
This book argues in favor of viewing personal libraries as technologies of self-making in the
early twentieth century, focusing on the writer Edith Wharton and her 5,000-plus volume
collection of books, in addition to other bibliophiles of her era, including Walter Benjamin.

Office
Forthcoming: Bloomsbury Press (Object Lessons series), November 2020
This book narrates a cultural and personal history of the office, from its pre-modern
beginnings to its nineteenth-century development to its twenty-first-century demise. It draws
upon a range of popular examples in arguing that offices, as primary sites of postmodern
labor, furnish a meaningful cornerstone of contemporary culture.

EDITED VOLUMES
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (new edition)
Forthcoming: W. W. Norton and Co., 2021
Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton (critical edition)
Forthcoming: Oxford University Press, 2022

DIGITAL PROJECTS
EdithWhartonsLibrary.org
This project establishes a web archive granting scholars and public users alike access to
Edith Wharton’s personal library materials at The Mount estate in Massachusetts. The beta
site was subjected to a first round of user testing in June of 2016 and early stages of this
project have received funding from The Edith Wharton Society, The University of North
Dakota, and the North Dakota Humanities Council. This project was a finalist for the
Whiting Foundation’s Public Engagement Fellowship in 2018 and has been featured on
WAMC Northeast National Public Radio.

ESSAYS AND ARTICLES

Public Writing / Journalism
“The Bestseller Who Hated Bestsellers: How Edith Wharton’s Reading Habits Square with
her Celebrity.” Lapham’s Quarterly, 20 July 2020, https://www.laphamsquarterly
roundtable/best-seller-who-hated-best-sellers.

“Town, Gown: Gone.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 April 2020.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Will-the-Pandemic-Change/248474?cid=
wcontentgrid.

“My University is Dying.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 September 2019.

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20190925-my-university-is-dying

“My Professor’s Living Room: Mentorship and the Idea of Academic Bohemia.” Majuscule,
Issue 1 (Fall 2019). https://majusculelit.com/40-2/my-professors-living-room/

“’I Gave Myself to Sin’: What Belle and Sebastian Taught Me About Cruelty.” Hyped on
Melancholy, Issue 1 (Summer 2019). HypedonMelancholy.com.

“Office Park: The Spheres at Amazon Headquarters.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 26 April
2019. LAReviewofBooks.com

“Writers Who Excel at Lists.” The Rambling, 26 January 2019, TheRambling.com.

“Fantasies of Functional Accumulation: Hoarding in Home Alone.” Avidly, 21 December

2018. Avidly.lareviewofbooks.org

“How textbook rentals undercut students.” Inside Higher Ed, 6 June 2018.
InsideHigherEd.com

“Oh, the S@$% You’ll Do After You’re Tenured.” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, 21 March
2018. McSweeneys.net.

-- Editor’s Pick (#18): McSweeney’s Top 18 of 2018

 “(De)Composition: or, How Matter Matters.” Codex: Essays and Photographs on the Art of the
Book, ed. Micah Bloom (Grand Forks: University of North Dakota Press, 2018).

“In Praise of Not-Not Reading.” The Point, 6 April 2017. ThePointMag.com.

“How NDAs Stifle Speech on Campus.” Conditionally Accepted – Inside Higher Ed, 24 March
2017. InsideHigherEd.com/Conditionally-Accepted

“The Genius Next Door: When Octavia Butler Was My Neighbor.” Public Books, 15
December 2015. PublicBooks.org

-- Reprinted in Think in Public: A Public Books Reader, ed. Sharon Marcus. Columbia
University Press, 2019: pp. 29-45.

“Bagpipes: A Rock-and-Roll History.” The Atlantic, 9 July 2016. TheAtlantic.com.

“The Puerility of Purity: How Jonathan Franzen’s Latest Rewrites an Edith Wharton Novel
You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” The Los Angeles Review of Books, 11 March 2016.
LAReviewofBooks.com

“From Nowhere, and Everywhere.” The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education,
1 February 2016: B16.

“Loving the Alien: or, Making Theory Useful to the Undergraduate American Literature
Classroom.” Pedagogy in American Literary Studies (PALS) – blog, 25 & 27 January
2016. TeachingPals.wordpress.com.

“Engaging the Ghost: Digitization, Preservation, and the Lessons of a Haunted Library.”
The Mount—Blog, 31 July 2015. EdithWharton.org.

Peer-Reviewed / Scholarship
“Imagining Catastrophe: Seeing Sea Level Rise in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140.”
(under review: ASAP/J)

“The Burial Ground of the Humanities: How DH Pedagogy Separates the Living from the
Dead.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, Vol. IV: Pedagogy, eds. Brian Croxall and
Diane Jacacki. University of Minnesota Press: volume forthcoming.

“Reading the Reader: Edith Wharton’s Library, Digital Methods, and Networks of
Exchange.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, ed. Emily Orlando.
Bloomsbury: volume forthcoming.

“Getting to Know the Community: Using Raymond Williams’ ‘Knowable Communities’ to

Teach Wharton’s Summer.” MLA Approaches to Teaching Edith Wharton, ed. Ferdâ Asya:
volume forthcoming.

“Subscription Libraries and the Making of Modern Female Reading

 Communities.” Reading Communities, ed. Shafquat Towheed (Open UP – McGraw-
Hill Educational Publishers): volume forthcoming.

“Religious Texts in Edith Wharton’s Library.” Edith Wharton Review, 34.1 (2017):
79-85.

“Romancing the Interstitial: Howe’s The Hermaphrodite and the Substance of Sex in
Nineteenth-Century America.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, 72.3 (December 2017):
311-332.

“‘It’s painful to see them think’: Wharton, Fin de Siécle Science, and the Authentication of
Female Intelligence.” JMMLA, The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association,
49.2 (Fall 2016): 137-160.

---. Republished in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism online database (forthcoming

2020, Gale).

“An Impossible Woman: Henry James and the Mysterious Case of Anne Moncure
Crane.” American Literary Realism, 49.2 (Winter 2017): 95-113.

“A Month at The Mount: Research and the Unsearchable Archive.” The Edith Wharton
Review, 31.1 (Spring 2015): 32-40.

“Suffer the Little Vixens: Edith Wharton and Realist Terror in ‘Jazz Age’ America.”
JML: Journal of Modern Literature, 38.3 (Spring 2015): 99-118.

“Of Anarchy and Amateurism: Zine Publication and Traditions of Print Dissent.” JMMLA:
The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 14.1 (Fall 2010): 101-128.

“‘Reading for It’: Lesbian Readers Constructing Culture and Identity through
Textual Experience.” Peele, Thomas, ed. Queer Popular Culture (New York:
Palgrave-MacMillan, 2007): 85-103.

Reviews
Review of The Toni Morrison Book Club, by Judah Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, and
Cassandra Jackson (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). The African American Review,
forthcoming issue 2021.

Review of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence: New Centenary Essays, ed. Arielle Zibrak
(Bloomsbury, 2020). American Literary History online reviews: forthcoming.

Review of Homecoming, dir. Beyoncé (Netflix, 2019). The African American Review, forthcoming
issue 2020.

Review of Amity and Prosperity, by Eliza Griswold (Macmillan, 2018). The Cleveland Review of
Books, issue forthcoming 2019.

Review of The Biopolitics of Feeling, by Kyla Schuller (Duke UP, 2018). Legacy: A Journal of
 American Women Writers, 36.1 (spring 2019): pp. 165-7.

Review of Reductive Reading: A Syntax of Victorian Moralizing, by Sarah Allison (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2018). V21: Victorian Studies for the 21st Century, 3 May 2019.
V21Collective.org.

Review of None of This is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer, by Benjamin J. Robertson
(Minnesota UP, 2018). ASAP/J—The Open Access Platform of ASAP Journal, 14 March
2019. ASAPjournal.com.

“You Can Read (and So Can This Computer).” Review of Enumerations: Data and Literary
Study, by Andrew Piper (Chicago UP, 2018). Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 November
2018. LAReviewofbooks.com.

“Fantasies of Form.” Review of Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, by Caroline Levine
(Princeton UP, 2015). Criticism, 59.4 (Fall 2018): pp. 661-6.

Review of Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, eds. Meredith L. Goldsmith and Emily Orlando
(University Press of Florida, 2016). Studies in American Naturalism, 16.2 (Spring 2017):
pp. 81-4.

Review of Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, eds. Meredith L. Goldsmith and Emily Orlando
(University Press of Florida, 2016). American Literary Realism 29.3 (Spring 2017): pp.
294-6.

Poetry
“Familiar Faces.” Dovecote, v. 2 (summer 2019): pp. 23-26. (4 poems)

FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS and GRANTS

The Whiting Foundation
2018 Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship: finalist (Fall 2017)
The Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship is designed to celebrate and empower
faculty who embrace public engagement as part of the scholarly vocation. I was
nominated by my University for this fellowship and then selected as a national
finalist.

North Dakota University System (NDUS)

Teaching with Technology Award and Commendatory Grant (Winter 2017)
Competitive, state-wide award from the North Dakota University System
recognizing technology use in the classroom.

The University of North Dakota

Office of Research and Development
Early Career Award (Spring 2016)
Competitive, internal grant funding the second stage of work in the Edith Wharton’s
Library digitization project.
 College of Arts and Sciences
Grant-Writing Initiative: Funding Recipient (Fall 2017)
Competitive, internal funding award resulting in a course release for the fall 2017
semester.

Undergraduate Technology Initiative Grant (Spring 2016)

Competitive, internal grant funding (application co-written with Dr. Crystal Alberts)
used to procure technology equipment for use by undergraduate students in English.
Proceeds from this grant enabled the purchase of 20 laptop computers with Adobe
Creative Suite software licenses as well as two laptop storage / charging stations.

Undergraduate Research Initiative Award (Spring 2016)

Competitive, internal funding put towards the hiring of an undergraduate research
assistant during the spring 2016 semester.

Senate Scholarly Activities Committee

First-Year Faculty Award (Spring 2015)
Competitive, paid research award funding the first stage of the
EdithWhartonsLibrary.org digital project.

The Edith Wharton Society

The Mount Research Award (Summer 2013)
Competitive, paid research fellowship that funded my work and residence at The
Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, MA.

Carnegie Mellon University

Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences:
Graduate Student Teaching Award (Spring 2014)

Department of English:
Graduate Student Teaching Award (Fall 2013)

Schaffer Dissertation Fellowship (2012-2013)

Posner Rare Book Collection Fellowship (2011-2012)

The College of Wooster

Best Senior Thesis – Criticism: Department of English (2005)

INVITED TALKS
What a Library Means to a Woman. The Mount—Lenox, MA. Part of The Mount’s annual summer
lecture series. 29 June 2020 (canceled).

“What a Library Means to a Woman like Edith Wharton.” University of Glasgow—Glasgow,

Scotland. Sponsored by the Transatlantic Literary Women (TLW) graduate study group. 27
May 2020. (Talk delivered via Zoom.)

“The Fin-de-Siécle Library, in Public and in Private.” Freie Universität Berlin—Berlin, Germany.
 Sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Institute. 18 June 2020 (postponed to 2021).

“Disability, Ethics, and Ethan Frome.” Boston College. Dr. Min Hyoung Song’s class on American
literature, 9 October 2019. (Talk delivered via Zoom.)

Selected CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION / PRESENTATIONS

Organizer / Chair
“The State of the Single-Author Study.” Panel on research methods; Modern Language
Association 2020 Convention. Seattle, WA, January 2-5, 2019.

“Imagining Catastrophe.” Panel science fiction / speculative fiction and climate change;
Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) 2018 conference. New
Orleans, LA: Oct. 18-21 2018.

“Asynchronous Critique: Mark Greif and the Burdens of Timeliness.” Panel on public
writing and contemporary critique; Association for the Study of the Arts of the
Present (ASAP) 2017 conference. Berkeley, CA: Oct. 24-28 2017.

“Other Worlds,” roundtable with Kim Stanley Robinson, Brian Greene, Allison Leigh Holt,
and Frank Huyler. University of North Dakota Writers Conference. Grand Forks,
North Dakota: April 4-6, 2016.

“Digital Media and the Reified Canon.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual
Convention. Austin, Texas: January 7-10 2016.

“Critical, and Cultural, Approaches to Music.” Cultural Studies Association

Annual Conference. Columbia College: Chicago, IL March 24 - 26 2011.

“Contemporary Knowledge Work.” Working Class Studies Association Annual

Conference. The University of Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh, PA June 1 -3 2009.

Presenter / Participant
“‘Right’ Thinking: Public Intellectuals and Trickle-Down Morality.” Midwestern Modern
Language Association conference. Chicago, IL: Nov. 15-18, 2019.

“The Reprint as Review: Digitally Mining the NYRB Archives to Reveal Trends in
Publishing and Canonicity.” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
(ASAP) 2019 conference. College Park, MD: Oct. 10-13 2019.

“Apocryphal Designs: The Asynchronous Appeal of the Nick and Nora Glass.” Association
for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) 2019 conference. College Park, MD:
Oct. 10-13 2019.

“The Reprint as Review: NYRB Classics Editions and the Business of Canonical
Renovation.” Modern Language Association (MLA) 2019 Conference. Chicago, IL,
January 6-9 2019.
 “Public Writing and Professional Endangerment; or, The Time I Picked a Fight with
Jonathan Franzen.” Modern Language Association (MLA) 2019 Conference.
Chicago, IL, January 6-9 2019.

“Reading the Reader: Edith Wharton’s Library and Networks of Exchange.” American
Literature Association (ALA) 2018 Conference. San Francisco, CA, May 24-27 2018.

“Workshop on Public Writing,” roundtable participant: Midwest Modern Language

Association (MMLA) 2017 conference. Cincinnati, OH: November 9-12 2017.

“Hugo Gellert and the Case for Actionable Aesthetics.” Modern Language Association
(MLA) 2017 Conference. Philadelphia, PA, January 5-8 2017.

“Haters Gonna Hate: Or, Better Living Through Agonism.” Midwest Modern Language
Association (MMLA) 2016 Conference. St. Louis, MO, November 10-13 2016.

“‘It’s Painful to See Them Think’: Edith Wharton, Fin de Siècle Science, and the Stakes of
Female Intelligence.” Edith Wharton Society (EWS) 2016 Conference. American
University: Washington, D.C., June 2-4 2016.

“I Am Not Your Enemy: Jamming, Clashing, and Locating Antagonism in Local Arts
Communities.” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Annual
Conference. Clemson University: Greenville, SC September 24-27 2015.

“‘A Flood of Material Ease’: Edith Wharton and the Mediated Landscape of Modernist
Paris.” Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Conference. Duquesne University:
Pittsburgh, PA. Nov. 8 -11 2014.

III. TEACHING
COURSES TAUGHT
University of North Dakota, Department of English
Assistant Professor

Graduate Courses
599: Material Culture (Spring 2019)
599: Workshop in Writing Criticism for Public Audiences (Spring 2017)
521: Studies in American Literature –
Transatlantic Modernism (Fall 2017)
521: Studies in American Literature –
Narrative and the Natural World (Fall 2015)
511: Problems in Literary Contemporary Criticism –
Theorizing the Digital in Literary Study (Spring 2015)
510: History of Literary Criticism (Fall 2019)
428: Digital Humanities (Fall 2016; Fall 2018)
415: Seminar in Literature –
Narrative Adaptation (Spring 2016)

Undergraduate Courses
 428: Digital Humanities (Fall 2016; Fall 2018)
408: Writing for Digital Environments (Spring 2019)
415: Seminar in Literature –
Narrative Adaptation (Spring 2016)
304: Survey of American Literature II: 1865-present (Spring 2015; Spring 2016)
272: Introduction to Literary Criticism (Spring 2017)
271: Reading and Writing About Texts (Fall 2014; Fall 2015; Fall 2019)
227: Introduction to Literature and Culture –
Gothic Fiction (Fall 2014)
227 E: Environmental Studies / Introduction to Literature and Culture
Literature and Climate Change (Fall 2018)

Carnegie Mellon University, Department of English

Graduate Student Instructor

76-309: Narrative and the Natural World (Spring 2014)

76-241: Introduction to Gender Studies (Spring 2012)
76-370: English Independent Study: Narrative, Story-telling, and Digital Media (Fall 2011)
76-234 American Women Novelists and the “Century of Struggle”:
1840 – 1930 (Spring 2011)
76-238 The Politics of Adaptation (Summer 2010)
76-101 Living Social in the Age of Social Media (Fall 2013)
76-101 Geeks and Intellectuals: The Culture, and Cult, of Intelligence (Fall 2011)
76-101 Punk and the Politics of Subculture (Fall 2008; Summer/Fall 2009;
Fall 2010; Spring 2011)
76-101 H Race and the Defining of Difference in America (Fall 2007/Spring 2008)

ADVISING
MA Portfolio (as adviser / portfolio committee member)
Michael Prewitt (2019)
MaKayla Valdez (2018)
Casey Kohs (2018)
Ian Galbraith (2017)
Danielle Hale (2017))
Kaitlin Dahle (2017)
Mekayla Shelton (2017)
Nicole Ingalls-Caley (2016)
Bea Stokkvik (2016)
Kelly Kennedy (2016)

PhD Dissertation (as adviser)

Sherry Bollero (ongoing): cultural studies, narrative theory / adaptation, visual studies,
material culture

PhD Dissertation (as committee member)

Cody Deitz (ongoing): transatlantic modernism, poetry, globalization
Andrew Harnish (ongoing): queer theory, affect theory, embodiment
 Jody Jensen (2016): postcolonial literature, gender, performance

PhD Exams (as committee member)

Amanda Osgood-Jonientz (2017): serialization, book history, 19th c. literature
Robin Smith (ongoing): poetry and poetics, postcolonial literature, post-45 literature
Ben Morris (2017): post-45 literature, experimental fiction
Sarah Dupree (2017): animal studies, post-45 literature
Cody Deitz (2019): memoir, poetry, globalization, post-modernity
Sherry Bollero (ongoing): cultural studies, narrative theory / adaptation, performance, drama
Andrew Harnish (2018): disability / queer studies, twentieth-century fiction, narrative theory
Amy Kielmeyer (ongoing): creative nonfiction, criticism, public writing, memoir

IV. SERVICE
Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)
Vice President (November 2018 – present)
Incoming President (November 2019 – November 2020)
Executive Board Member (November 2017 – present)

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Grant Reviewer – Cultural History Media Projects (Spring 2019)

Edith Wharton Society

Board Member / Membership Coordinator (April 2019 – present)

North Dakota Quarterly (NDQ)

Nonfiction Editor (Fall 2017 – present)

Bloomsbury
Book Manuscript Reviewer (fall 2019 – present)

Farleigh-Dickinson University Press

Book Manuscript Reviewer (Spring 2019)

Professional Journals
Referee, Twentieth-Century Literature (March 2019-present)
Referee, Lateral: The Journal of the Cultural Studies Association (March 2019-present)
Referee, The Space Between: American Culture and Fiction between the Wars (June 2018 – present)
Referee, The Edith Wharton Review (June 2016 – present)
Referee, JML: Journal of Modern Literature (August 2016 – present)

University of North Dakota

Department of English:
Executive Committee: member (Spring 2017 – Spring 2019)
Certificate in Writing, Editing, and Publishing (WEP) Coordinator (2017 – present)
Graduate Student Reading Series (Fall 2016 – Spring 2019)
Instructional Technology Coordinator (Spring 2016 – present)
English Graduate Student Association (EGSA) Faculty Representative (Fall 2014-present)
 College of Arts and Sciences:
AH! (Arts and Humanities) Talks: Series Coordinator (Summer 2015 – Spring 2018)

University-wide Service Appointments

Faculty Working Group in Digital and New Media: Chair (Winter 2017 – Fall 2019)

Carnegie Mellon University

Department of English:
Assistant Director: Master’s (MA) Program in Literary and Cultural Studies (2008 – 2010)
LCS 25th Anniversary Planning Committee (Spring 2012-Fall 2012)
Graduate Representative to the English Department Faculty (Fall 2011 – Spring 2012)
Graduate Student Representative, Literary and Cultural Studies Colloquium
Committee (2009 – 2012)
LCS Representative: Committee for Annual Teacher Orientation and Training
(2008 – 2010)
Graduate Representative: Ph.D. Selection Committee (2009)

Office of Undergraduate Research:

Advisor, Carnegie Mellon Imagine Cup 2011 (Fall 2010 - Spring 2011)

V. SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

LANGUAGES
French translation
Spanish speaking and translation
Scottish Gaelic speaking and translation

Select SOFTWARE and DIGITAL MEDIA

Adobe Creative Suite
including Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Premier, InDesign and AfterEffects software
Omeka (open-source publishing platform)
Zotero (open-source bibliography software)
Gephi (open-source data visualization software)
HTML and CSS proficiency
Basic web design (using platforms like WordPress.org, and software like Adobe
Dreamweaver)

MEMBERSHIPS
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Edith Wharton Society (EWS)
Association for the Study of the Arts of Present (ASAP)
Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)
American Literature Association (ALA)
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP)

Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)—

editorial membership, through North Dakota Quarterly