Emily Allen

Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1996

Specialization

British Literature

Research Areas:
Nineteenth-century British literature, cultural studies, gender studies, narrative theory, history of the novel, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)

Emily Allen completed her PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and held an Isaac Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University before joining the faculty at Purdue University in 1997. She specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, especially the Victorian novel, and is an affiliated faculty member in Purdue's programs for Comparative Literature and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Professor Allen is the author of Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (The Ohio State University Press) and Novel-Poetry: The Shape of the Real and the Problem of Form (co-written with Dino Felluga and forthcoming from Oxford University Press in September 2024). She is one of the founders of NAVSA, the North American Victorian Studies Association.

Professor Allen is active in honors education and served as the Director of the College of Liberal Arts Honors Program from 2008-2012 and the inaugural Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the John Martinson Honors College (JMHC) from 2012-2021. She is currently the founding director of the JMHC’s Blue Sky Teaching and Learning Laboratory, which focuses on the development and study of inclusive and interdisciplinary pedagogy. Professor Allen regularly mentors undergraduate researchers and in 2024 published an archival history with a team of honors students, Forging the Future: A History of the John Martinson Honors College, 2013-2023 (Purdue University Press).

In the English Department, Professor Allen teaches classes on the novel and on nineteenth-century topics. Her teaching has been recognized by the Charles B. Murphy Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award, and the Teaching for Tomorrow Award. She is a member of Purdue’s Teaching Academy, and her name is listed in Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers.