School of Humanities Faculty Member’s Research Supported by Prestigious, Competitive NEH Summer Stipend

Tue, 08/23/2022 - 01:52pm | By: David Tisdale

A National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend earned by University of Southern Mississippi (USM) English program associate professor Dr. Alexandra Valint helped further progress on her research examining the representation of mobility aids in Victorian literature and of the characters using them.

Dr. Alexandra Valint says the literary examples she explores for her book, tentatively titled Wheelchairs, Crutches, and Disability in Victorian Literature, includes the disabled child characters Tiny Tim from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the Earl of Cairnforth from Dinah Mulock Craik’s A Noble Life. She posits that mobility aids serve as a nexus for the intersection between the user’s disability, gender, age, race, and class.

“Both characters somewhat fit the stereotype of the saintly disabled character who inspires others,” Dr. Valint explained. “More broadly, in the project, I argue mobility aids in Victorian literature are not ideologically neutral devices that only serve to increase users’ movement -- though, crucially, they do primarily serve that purpose. They are also aids in another sense: they help shape the user’s identity, their interactions with society, and external perceptions of the user.”

Dr. Valint’s analysis of Victorian literature is also contextualized by her archival work conducted in London museums and archives, some of which was funded through USM’s Aubrey Keith Lucas and Ella Ginn Lucas Endowment for Faculty Excellence. “I'm very grateful for the university’s support of this project,” she said.

"NEH Summer Stipends are prestigious and incredibly difficult to receive. Nationally, scholars will tell you it's almost impossible to get one and it's been a few years since someone from USM was a recipient,” said Dr. Matthew Casey, director of the USM School of Humanities. “This speaks to the quality of Dr. Valint's work, and it's certainly good for the university to have a scholar receive such a competitive award.

“Her research embodies a nice combination of cutting-edge methodologies with the classical aspects of the discipline as she forces us to read familiar texts in new ways, and I'm glad others in the field are recognizing that."

Dr. Valint joined the USM faculty in 2012. Her areas of expertise include Victorian literature, children's and young adult literature, narrative theory, gothic theory, and disability studies.

For information about the USM School of Humanities’ English program, visit https://www.usm.edu/humanities/index.php.