Miss Brittani Allen

(she/her)

Research

My research focuses on Victorian children’s literature and ecocriticism, with my thesis also incorporating a contemporary work to illustrate the broader conversation on how children’s literature depicting fantasy worlds with unconventional features and behaviours can teach lessons about the cohabitation of humans, nonhumans, and other organisms. This fosters sustainability and futurity rather than exploitation. To approach this topic, I developed a new ecocritical conceptual model, which forms the foundation of my project. While broadly applicable across disciplines, it is especially suited to my thesis as it explores how ecocritical literature highlights ecocritical principles, particularly in 19th-century texts. These texts use their historical distance to encourage ecological value inquiry and trace the competing exploitative and ecological perspectives that have emerged since the Anthropocene. I also argue for greater attention to the ecocritical potential of children's literature, a genre long associated with the transmission of values.

A great deal of my research incorporates Lewis Carroll's Alice novels. 

Teaching

Current Experience

I am a Graduate Tutor in English Literature. This will be my eighth year teaching at the university level. 

Previous Experience

I have seven years of teaching experience at the university level. My experience has been at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Dakota, the University of South Florida, and Methodist University. I was responsible for designing and teaching the modules, as well as grading all assignments and term essays at each university. At the University of South Florida, I served as a mentor for incoming graduate students who were teaching for the first time. In addition to teaching literature, composition and rhetoric modules at each university, I was also on the summer curriculum development team where I was responsible for meeting with two colleagues to develop the new curriculum for first-year writing students at the University of South Florida (approximately 400 modules across two terms each year). I've taught first, second, third, and fourth year students throughout my seven years. 

Biography

I began my PhD studies at Cardiff University in January 2024 as a distance student before relocating back to the UK over the summer. Prior to this, I was All But Dissertation (ABD) from my PhD programme at the University of South Florida, where I excelled but my committee unfortunately dissolved in the early stages of writing the doctoral dissertation (2023). My exam areas were the Long Nineteenth Century, Environmental Literature for Children and Children’s Literature. I also earned two Masters degrees with Distinction. The first was from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in English Education, Thesis track (2016-2018). My thesis explored the nonsensical lessons Alice learned in the Lewis Carroll novels, as well as how her time in Wonderland and Looking-Glass World shaped her identity and development during the age of reason. I earned my second Masters degree from the University of North Dakota (2019) and completed another Alice project that examined body image historically during the Victorian era and within the Alice novels. I earned my undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in English Education and have a teaching license for grades 6-12.

Honours and awards

• Lewis Carroll Society of North America Stan Marx Memorial Grant, June 2024 Awarded $500.00 (USD)
• ChLA Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grant, May 2024 Awarded $1,500.00 (USD)
• USF English Department Irving Deer Moore Memorial Scholarship, April 2023 Awarded $1,275.00 (USD)
• USF English Department Harry and Julian Newman Archival Research Award, University of South Florida, March 2022 Awarded $10,000.00 (USD)
• USF Student Government Conference Presentation Grant, University of South Florida, February 2020 Awarded $500.00 (USD)
• UNCP Graduate School Travel Award, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, September 2017 Awarded $250.00 (USD)
• UNCP Office of Student Involvement and Leadership Travel Award, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, September 2017 Awarded $125.00 (USD)
• UNCP Office of Student Involvement and Leadership Travel Award, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, April 2017 Awarded $125.00 (USD)
• UNCP Friends of the Library Dr. Raymond J. Rundus Scholarship, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, March 2017 Awarded $300.00 (USD)

Professional memberships

• British Association for Victorian Studies
• Children’s Literature Association
• Lewis Carroll Association of North America
• Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
• North American Victorian Studies Association
• Victorians Institute
• Friends of the Bodleian
• Modern Language Association of America
• Sigma Kappa Delta Honor’s Society
• Sigma Tau Delta Honor’s Society
• Kappa Delta Pi Honor’s Society
• Lambda Sigma Honor’s Society
• Phi Theta Kappa Honor’s Society

Academic positions

Instructor of First-Year Writing, Methodist University, Fayetteville, North Carolina, August 2023 – May 2024

Courses

• Composition I (ENC 1010)
• Composition II (ENC 1040)
• Rhetorical Theory and Practice of Pop Culture (CME 2000)

Adjunct Instructor, English, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, August 2023-December 2023

Courses

• Composition I (ENC 1101)

Graduate Teaching Assistant, English, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, August 2019 – May 2023

Courses

• Composition I (ENC 1101)
• Composition II (ENC 1102)
• Introduction to Literature (LIT 2000)
  • Fairy Tales: From Brothers Grimm to the #MeTooMovement
  • Fantastic Tails: Animals and Nonhumans in Fantasy and Fairy Tales
  • The Language and Culture of Disney (and more) Throughout the Years
  • Scientific Literature: Learning about Biology, Botany, and Zoology from Children’s Literature

Additional Positions, University of South Florida, Department of English, Tampa, Florida, May 2020 – May 2023

• Faculty Learning Community, Graduate Student Representative: August 2022 – May 2023
• English Graduate Student Association, Treasurer: August 2021 – August 2022
• First Year Composition Content Design Specialist: May 2021 – December 2021
• First Year Composition Mentor: August 2021 – December 2021
• First Year Composition Summer Curriculum Development Team Member: May – August 2021
• First Year Composition Mentor: August 2020 – December 2020
• First Year Composition Summer Curriculum Development Team Member: May 2020 – August 2020

Graduate Teaching Assistant, English, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, August 2018 – May 2019

Courses

• Composition I (ENG 110)

University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Department of Business

• Graduate Student Editor for Dr. John A. Parnell’s Nonmarket Strategy in Business Organizations: A Global Assessment, 2019: August 2017 – December 2017

Writing Center Assistant Director and Tutor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, North Carolina, August 2016 – May 2018

Courses

• Graduate Research & Writing Academy
• Lesson Planning for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
• Citation Workshop for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
• One to one peer tutoring

PRAXIS Plus Tutor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, North Carolina, August 2015 – May 2016

Courses

• Reading Comprehension
• Writing

Committees and reviewing

Methodist University, Department of Communication, Composition & Rhetoric, Fayetteville, North Carolina, August 2023 – May 2024

• Faculty Judge for Dr. Sue Kimball Creative Writing Competition (April 2024)
• Faculty co-advisor for student publication, Monarch Review
• Faculty co-advisor for student AI research group