Ashley Reed

Ashley Reed, Associate Professor and Director of the Literature/English Major Program

_{Department of English

405 Shanks Hall

180 Turner Street, NW

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-8650 | akreed@vt.edu}

Ashley Reed is an associate professor in the Department of English who studies U.S. literature and religion of the nineteenth century. Her monograph, Heaven’s Interpreters: Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America, reveals how women writers from the 1820s through the 1860s transformed the nineteenth-century public sphere by using the imaginative power of fiction to craft new models of religious identity and action. She has published articles in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, and Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Dr. Reed received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014 and held an Andrew W. Mellow Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities in 2014-15. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Religion and Culture.

Principal Areas of Research Focus

American Literature and Religion
American Women Writers
Secularism Studies
Digital Humanities

Education

PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BA, College of William & Mary

Professional Roles

Vice-President, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society
Consultant, William Blake Archive
C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
Society for the Study of American Women Writers

Awards and Honors

Certificate of Teaching Excellence, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, 2020
Aspire! Award, Office of Student Affairs, Virginia Tech, 2019
XCaliber Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Technology-Enriched Active Learning, Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS), Virginia Tech, 2018
Emerging Scholar Award, Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, 2018
C. Hugh Holman Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Pre-1900 American Literature, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014
Laurence G. Avery Award for Excellence in Teaching Literature, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014

Publications

Books

Heaven’s Interpreters: Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America. Cornell University Press, September 2020.
The Sentimental Mode: Essays in Literature, Film, and Television. Co-edited with Jennifer A. Williamson and Jennifer Larson. McFarland, 2014.

Edited Journal Issues

Special issue of Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses: “Medicine and Religion in a Secular Age.” Co-edited with Kelly Bezio. Issue 47.2 (June 2018).
Special issue of Literature and Medicine: “Literature, Medicine, Religion.” Co-edited with Kelly Bezio. Issue 32.2 (Fall 2014).

Journal Articles

“Hope Leslie and the Grounds of Secularism.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 66.1 (2020): 88-131. DOI: 10.1353/esq.2020.0004
“‘I Have No Disbelief’: Spiritualism and Secular Agency in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 5.1 (Spring 2017): 151-177. DOI: 10.1353/jnc.2017.0008. This essay received the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association’s 2018 Emerging Scholars Award.
“Digital Humanities and the Study and Teaching of North American Religions.” Religion Compass 10.2 (December 2016): 307-316. DOI: 10.1111/rec3.12226.
“Craft and Care: The Maker Movement, Catherine Blake, and the Digital Humanities.” Essays in Romanticism 23.1 (Spring 2016): 23-38.
“Managing an Established Digital Humanities Project: Principles and Practices from the Twentieth Year of the William Blake Archive.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 8.1 (Spring 2014).

Book Chapters

“The Trials and Errors of Building Prudence Person’s Scrapbook: An Annotated Digital Edition.” In Teaching with Digital Humanities: Tools and Methods for Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Jennifer Travis and Jessica DeSpain, eds. University of Illinois Press, 2018. 24-43.
“Madea’s Middle Class: Sentimental Spaces in Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion and Why Did I Get Married?” Co-authored with Jennifer Larson. In The Sentimental Mode: Essays in Literature, Film, and Television. Jennifer A. Williamson, Jennifer Larson, and Ashley Reed, eds. McFarland, 2014. 190-210.