Professor
215 Morton Hall
(256)824-2382
neffd@uah.edu 

Education:
PhD- University of Illinois, Urbana (1978)
MA - Wayne State University
BA - Wayne State University

Areas of Specialization/Interests:
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature, literary criticism and theory, modern drama, Anglo-Irish literature, crime fiction

Current Projects:
Articles on the “Curse of Ham,” African Slavery, and Frankenstein; Keats, Masturbation Anxiety, and The Eve of St. Agnes”; the “Cardenio” episode in Don Quixote, Theobald’s Double Falsehood, and Keats’s Eve of St. Agnes
          

                             
Publications:
“Safie/Saphie: Mungo Park’s Travels into the Interior Districts of Africa and the De Lacey Episode in Frankenstein” ANQ 21.1 (2008): 45-50.

"'A Spiritual Sphere Wholly Obscure': 'Lunacy,' the Orlando Furioso, and 'the Incident at the Mess' in Billy Budd.” ANQ 16 (2003): 28-33.

"Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies: Byron, Masculinity, and the History of Sexualities." Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (2002): 395-438.
 
“The Flower and the Bee: Keats, Imitatio, and the Orlando Furioso.” South Atlantic Review 67 (2002): 38-62.

 "'The Horrid Face of the Sea': 'K’s' Wedding, Besiegements of Jerusalem, and ‘Dover Beach.'" English Language Notes 38.1 (2000): 58-68.

“Between Clinamen and Tessera: Female Homophilia in Gerusalemme Liberata and Christabel.” LIT 10 (1999): 193-217.

“Phidias and the ‘Runic stone’: Gray’s ‘Alcaic Ode’ and ‘Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.’” Victorian Poetry 35 (1997): 543-50.

“The Times, the Crimean War, and ‘Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.’” Papers on Language and Literature 33.2 (1997): 169-81. Reprinted in Poetry Criticism (PC-94). Detroit, MI: Gale, 2009.

“Anoedipal Fiction: Schizoanalysis and The Black Dahlia.” Poetics Today 18.3 (1997): 301-42.

“Manfred and the Mac-Ivors.” ANQ 10.4 (1997): 24-29.

“Hostages to Empire: The Anglo-Indian Problem in Frankenstein, The Curse of Kehama, and The Missionary.” European Romantic Review 8.4 (1997):386-408.

Horse vs. Crow: Sam Shepard, Ted Hughes, and The Tooth of Crime." Journal of American Drama and Theatre 8.3 (1996): 35-49.

"The 'Paradise of the Mothersons': Frankenstein and The Empire of the Nairs."
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 95 (1996): 204-22.

"Into the Heart of the Heart of the Chronotope: Dialogism, Theoretical Physics, and Catastrophe Theory." Yale Journal of Criticism 4.2 (1991): 87-104. Reprinted in Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael E. Gardiner. 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.

"Bartley's Fall: Pyrolatreia and Riders to the Sea." Notes on Modern Irish Literature 1 (1989): 26-31.

"Synge, Spinoza, and The Well of the Saints." ANQ 2.4 (1989): 138-45.

"Synge's Stoic Tragedy in Riders to the Sea." Eire‑Ireland 23 (1988): 117-27.

"Two into Three Won't Go: Mimetic Desire and the Dream of Androgyny in
Dancing in the Dark." Modern Fiction Studies 34.3 (1988): 387-403.

"Synge's Hecuba." Eire‑Ireland 19 (1984): 74-86.

"Overdetermination and Ambiguity: Narrative Strategies in Keats's Lamia."  Research Studies 52.3/4 (1983): 138-45.

"'Extraordinary Means': Healers and Healing in 'A Conversation with My Father.'" Literature and Medicine 2 (1983): 118-24.

"Love and Strife in 'Dover Beach.'" Victorian Newsletter 53 (Spring 1978): 28-30.

Awards:
The UAH Foundation Award for Research and Creative Activity (1998); The UAH nominee for the Carnegie Foundation's US Professor of the Year Program (1995); The UAH Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching (1994); The Alpha Lambda Delta Teaching Award (1982)