I’m a professor at the University of North Texas with a dual focus on classical Hollywood film and Victorian literature and culture. For most of my time at UNT I’ve been housed in the English department, but starting in the Fall of 2026 my home department will become Media Arts so that more of my teaching can be in the field of film history and theory.

I’ve currently got a lot of different writing, research, and editing logs in the fire, but my biggest project-in-progress is my third monograph, Unwomaned!: Classic Hollywood Stardom and the Threat of Female Independence. Another major way that I’ve spent my work-time over the past decade has been by serving as the editor-in-chief of the journal Studies in the Novel.

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