Education
Ph.D., Cornell University | 2005

M.A., Cornell University | 2000

B.A., St. Mary’s College of Maryland | 1997

Research and Teaching Interests
Professor Amir’s areas of specialization include Victorian literature, nineteenth-century fiction, and the novel as genre. His scholarship focuses on the representation of class and social mobility in Victorian fiction, particularly novels of the 1860s and 1870s, as well as the complex relationship between gossip and narrative.

Publications
“‘Welcome (Back) to the Brotherhood’: Nostalgia, Masculinity, and the Selling of the Mitchum Man.” Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising: Dreams for Sale. Eds. Luigi Manca, Alessandra Manca, and Gail Pieper. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. 69-78.

“‘So Delightful a Plot’: Lies, Gossip, and the Narration of Social Advancement in The Eustace Diamonds.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.1 (2008). 187-204.

“‘When You Read Their Writings’: Teaching Critical Thinking with the Frankenstein Manuscripts.” Liberal Arts and Core Texts in Our Students’ World: Selected Proceedings from the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Association of Core Texts and Courses, Los Angeles, April 10-13, 2014, edited by Greg Camp, Association of Core Texts and Courses, 2019, pp. 75-82.

Selected Presentations
“‘Corrected and Augmented… in Many Places’: The Shelleys and the Creation of the Frankenstein Manuscript.” Invited lecture, Shimer Great Books School at North Central College (October 2018).

“‘When You Read Their Writings’: Disrupting Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Twentieth Annual Association for Core Texts and Courses Conference, Los Angeles, CA (April 2014).

“‘An Unauthorized Intruder’: Social Mobility and the Challenging Talk of Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters.” Biennial Women’s Research Conference (“Women and Challenge”), University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD (March 2011).

“‘Tormented with… Forgiveness’: Power and Pardon in Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her?” Third Global “Forgiveness: Probing the Boundaries” conference, Mansfield College, Oxford, UK (July 2010).

“‘The Mind Prefers… Conjecture to History’: Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta, Gossip, and the Romance of Social Mobility.” Red River Conference on World Literature: North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND (April 2009).

“‘Drawn Almost into Frightful Neighborhood’: England, France, and the Problem of National Identity in Wordsworth’s Sonnets.” Midwest Modern Language Association convention: Chicago, IL (November 2006).

“Interpreting the Interpretive Impasse of Hopkins’s ‘Spring and Fall.’” Annual conference sponsored by the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches sur les Langues, les Littératures, la Lecture et L’Élaboration de la Pensée (“The Plurality of Interpretation”): Université de Reims, Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France (March 2006).

Invited panelist, “Graduate Student Teaching and the Future Professoriate.” Cornell Consortium for Writing in the Disciplines: Ithaca, NY (June 2003).

“‘Not Much of an Explanation’: Victorian Onomastics and the (Mis)naming of the Middle-Class Woman in Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters.” Modern Language Association convention: Washington, DC (December 2000).