I’m a professor of literary and media studies at the University of North Texas with particular research interests in Victorian literature, classical Hollywood film, and 1970s and 80s TV. I’m the author of two books (Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship and Gone Girls, 1684-1901: Flights of Feminist Resistance in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Novel), co-editor of the essay collection Victorian Gaslighting: Genealogy of an Injustice, and have served as the editor-in-chief of the literary studies journal Studies in the Novel since 2017.

I’ve currently got a lot of different writing, research, and editing logs in the fire, including one project-in-progress on claustrophobia and sexual violence in Victorian fiction, one on antifeminist fear-mongering and female stardom in early Hollywood films and fan magazines, and one on my childhood TV-watching predilections and perceptions.

I originally hail from Philadelphia and hold degrees from Harvard University (A.B.) and the University of Southern California (M.A., Ph.D.). My parents named me after Nora Charles (a.k.a. Myrna Loy, pictured below) from The Thin Man, which probably made my obsession with fabulous old movies inevitable.