Editions:

Editor.  Comparative Text: “A Story of Today” (Margret Howth) by Rebecca Harding Davis. Atlantic Monthly, 1861-62.  Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, 2018, https://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com  

Editor. A Law unto Herself  by Rebecca Harding Davis. 1878. University of Nebraska Press, 2014.  

Journal Issues:

Co-Editor (with Robin L. Cadwallader) Rebecca Harding Davis, special issue of Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 49, no. 7, Oct/ Nov. 2020. 

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

“From ‘Facts’ to ‘Pictures’: Rebecca Harding Davis and Civil War Memory,” Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, edited by Kathleen Diffley and Coleman Hutchinson, Cambridge UP, 2022, 151-66.

“Rebecca Harding Davis and Early Women’s Detective Fiction.” Clues: A Journal of Detection vol. 40, no. 1, 2022, pp.14-25.

“Edith Wharton Online: Reimagining the Graduate Seminar.” Teaching Edith Wharton’s Major Novels and Short Fiction, edited by Ferda Asya. Palgrave,  2021, pp. 267-78. 

"Introduction." (with Robin L. Cadwallader) Rebecca Harding Davis, special issue of Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 49, no. 7, Oct/Nov 2020, pp. 1-7.

“’That dim abode’: Uncanny Region in Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘The Tragedy of Fauquier’ ” American Women’s Regionalist Fiction: Mapping the Gothic, edited by Monika Elbert and Rita Bode. Palgrave, 2020, pp. 157-75.  

“Social Protest Fiction.” The Blackwell Companion to American Literature. vol. 2, edited by Susan Belasco, Theresa Strouth Gaul, Linck Johnson, and Michael Soto. Wiley Blackwell, 2020, pp. 426-40.  

“Edith Wharton and Law.” Critical Insights: Edith Wharton, edited by Myrto Drizou. New Salem Press, 2018, pp. 124-35.  

“The Specter and The Spectator: Rebecca Harding Davis’ ‘The Second Life’ and the Naturalist Gothic.” Haunting Realities, edited by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryder, University of Alabama Press, 2017, pp. 205-18.  

"Introduction."  The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Afterword Barry Sears, Signet Classics, 2015, pp. v-xii.  

"Introduction." A Law Unto Herself. University of Nebraska Press, 2014, pp. ix-xlv.  

“Assessing Questions of Intent and Culpability: A Legal Review of the Shooting in Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’” (with Kenneth Brandt),  The Hemingway Review vol. 33, no. 2, 2014, pp. 8-29.  

“From General Education to Law and Literature: Teaching Jack London in Multiple Contexts.”  Approaches to Teaching Jack London, edited by Kenneth Brandt and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. Modern Language Association, 2014,  pp. 177-86.  

“Rights Claims and the Rule of Law in Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Life in the Iron-Mills’” Topic Special Issue: Rebecca Harding Davis. vol. 59,  2013, pp. 15-29.   Reprinted in:  Short Story Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau. vol. 192, Gale, 2014.     

“Casting Lots, Contracts, and Cannibals in William Dean Howells’s A Modern Instance.”  English Language Notes Special Issue: Law, Literature, and Culture edited by Nan Goodman. vol. 48,.no. 2, 2010, pp. 143-52.  

“Rights and Justice in Edith Wharton’s The Reef.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. vol.  39, 2010, pp. 1-24.  

“Self-Interest vs. Self-Sacrifice: Louisa May Alcott’s Publishers and the Depiction of Contract in A Modern Mephistopheles.”  Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace, edited by Earl Yarington and Mary DeJong.  Cambridge Scholar’s Press, 2007, pp. 349-66.  

“Prior Claims and Sovereign Rights: The Sexual Contract in Edith Wharton’s Summer.” Law and Literature, edited by Michael J. Meyer.  Rodophi, 2004, pp. 193-206.  

“Interrogations of Justice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Cycnos vol. 19, no. 2, 2002, pp. 213-224.

Other Publications:

“Chapter 7: Amy’s ‘Valley of Humiliation’” Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: A 150th Anniversary Celebration Blog, edited by Anne Phillips and Gregory Eiselein, 2018,  https://lw150.wordpress.com/  

“Rebecca Harding Davis and Law.” Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive. http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com/  

“The Legal Context of ‘The Case of Jane Boyer’” Rebecca Harding Davis Society Newsletter vol. 3, no. 1, 2012, pp. 2-4.    

“Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow.”  Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction.  Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones. New York: Facts on File, 2009. pp. 275-77.    

“Scott Turow.”  Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction.  Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones. New York: Facts on File, 2009. pp. 350-51.  

“The Summons by John Grisham.”  Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction.  Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones.  New York: Facts on File, 2009. pp. 339-40.  

“Defining Romanticism: The Implications of Nature in Jane Eyre and Frankenstein.” Prometheus Unplugged? Romanticisms Past and Future. Emory University. April 1996. Web.  Excerpt “Nature, the Moon, and Jane Eyre” reprinted in The Bronte Messenger vol. 17, 2008, pp. 3-5.  

“Review of Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 87, no. 1-2, 2004, pp. 231-36.

 “Review of What’s Left of Theory: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory.”  Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 84, 2004, pp. 3-4.

Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works 
Site Director, Jan. 2019-May 2023
New Location (some items may be unavailable during site reorganization): Rebecca Harding Davis Archive 

Transcription, Coding, and Notes:

"The Case of Jane Boyer" by Rebecca Harding Davis. Peterson's Magazine, vol. 72, July 1877, pp. 33-37. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Dec. 2022.

"A Lesson From France." [Unsigned by Rebecca Harding Davis] Saturday Evening Post, 15 Aug. 1903, p. 12. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Dec. 2022.

“The Pot of Gold,” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Youth’s Companion, 4 Jan 1872, pp 1-2. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, April 2021,

“The Lesson of Decoration Day” [unsigned by Rebecca Harding Davis] Saturday Evening Post, 30 May 1903, p. 12. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, April 2021.

"The Daughter-In-Law" by Rebecca Harding Davis.  Peterson's Magazine, vol. 53, Feb. 1868, pp. 121-32. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Jan. 2020.

“A Night in the Mountains” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Appleton’s Journal, vol. 3, Dec. 1877, pp. 505-10. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Feb. 2020, http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com/items/show/208 

“Truth Once More Stranger than Fiction,” Congregationalist, 10 Nov. 1898, pp. 648-49. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Feb. 2020, http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com/items/show/204 

“Anne” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol 78, 1889, pp. 744-55. Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Oct. 2019, http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com

“The Murder in the Glen Ross” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Peterson’s Magazine, vol. 40, Nov-Dec, 1861, pp. 347-55, 438-48.   Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, Sept. 2018,  http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com 

“The Asbestos Box” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Peterson’s Magazine, vol. 41, March 1862, pp. 210-16.   Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, April 2018. http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com 

“The Locked Chamber” by Rebecca Harding Davis. Peterson’s Magazine, vol. 41, Jan. 1862, pp. 42-54.   Rebecca Harding Davis Complete Works Digital Archive, April 2018. http://rebeccahardingdaviscompleteworks.com

« Read Less

Roundtable: “Beyond Woolson Scholarship.” Fourteenth Biennial Constance Fenimore Woolson Conference. Case Western, Cleveland, OH. April 7-9, 2022.

“Rebecca Harding Davis and Early Women’s Detective Fiction.” American Literature Association. Boston, MA. May 2019.  

“’He must be a lawyer’: Legal Discourse in Mary Noailles Murfree’s The Prophet of the Great Smokey Mountains”  Thirteenth Biennial Constance Fenimore Woolson Conference. Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. April  4-7, 2019.  

“Spaces of Resistance: American Women Writers and the Industrial Reform Novel.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Denver, CO. November 2018.

“The Regional Gothic in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Peterson’s Fiction” American Literature Association. Boston, MA. May 2017.  

“Editing Rebecca Harding Davis for the Classroom” American Literature Association. San Francisco, CA. May 2016.  

“Archival Challenges.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Philadelphia, PA.  November 4-8, 2015.  

“The Specter and The Spectator: Rebecca Harding Davis and the Naturalist Gothic.”  American Literature Association.  Boston, MA. May 22-24, 2015.

  “’The Deaf and the Dumb’: Rebecca Harding Davis and Pennsylvania Workplace Reforms.” American Literature Association. Washington, DC. May 22-25, 2014.  

“Rebecca Harding Davis’s Detective Fiction and the Civil War.” Witnessing and Remembering the Civil War(s): Woolson, Davis, and their Contemporaries. Columbus, GA. Feb 21-23, 2013.  

“Teaching Alcott in Law and Literature.”  American Literature Association. San Francisco, CA.  May 24-27, 2012.  

“Marcus Schouler, Detective? Reading Frank Norris’s McTeague as a Crime Novel.” American Literature Association Symposium: Crime Fiction and American Culture. Savannah, GA. Sept. 22-24, 2011.  

“’To Concord and back’: Rebecca Harding Davis and Louisa May Alcott.” American Literature Association. Boston, MA. May 26-29, 2011.  

“Approaches to Teaching ‘Life in the Iron Mills.’” American Literature Association.  San Francisco, CA. May 27-30, 2010.  

“’Why did this chance word cling to him so obstinately?’: Rights Discourse and Natural Law in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. Brown University. Providence, RI. March 19-20, 2010.  

“Contract, Property, and the Question of Justice in Rebecca Harding Davis’s A Law Unto Herself.”  American Literature Association.  Boston, MA.  May 21-24, 2009.  

“Rights and Region in Selected Works by Rebecca Harding Davis.” American Literature Association.  San Francisco, CA.  May 22-25, 2008.  

“Leaving Justice to Chance: Gendered Justice in Edith Wharton’s The Reef.” Literature and Law Conference.  John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  New York, NY. April 11, 2008.  

Poster Presentation “Cannibalism, Contracts, and Capitalism:  Reading William Dean Howells’s A Modern Instance as a Naturalist Text.”  MTSU Scholar’s Week.  Murfreesboro, TN.  April 6, 2007.    

“Louisa May Alcott and her Publishers.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers.  Philadelphia, PA.  November 8-11, 2006.  

“Contractual Obligation and Necessity in William Dean Howells’s A Modern Instance.” American Literature Association.  San Francisco, CA. May 25-28, 2006.  

 “The Treatment of Law in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘A Whisper in the Dark.’” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. College of Law. Syracuse, NY. March 17-18, 2006.  

“James’s ‘thin guarantee’: Relational Contracts and Aesthetic Representation in The Wings of the Dove.”  American Literature Association.  Long Beach, CA. May 30-June 2, 2002.                                

“‘In love and in law’: Legal Discourse in Louisa May Alcott’s Work.”  Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference. University of Pennsylvania College of Law. Philadelphia, PA. March 8-10, 2002.        

“Representations of Democracy in the Work of William Dean Howells.” Literature and  Democracy Conference.  Emory University.  Atlanta, GA. February 22-24, 2002.                                

“Interrogations of Justice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” International Law and Literature Conference.  Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis.  Nice, France. June 27-29, 2001.                                 “

Rights and Justice in Edith Wharton’s The Reef.”  Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference.  Georgetown Law School.  Washington, D.C.  March 9-11, 2000.                                

“‘Gifts for Gifts Back Again’: Bargaining and the Individual in William Dean Howells’ A Hazard of New Fortunes.” Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference.  Wake Forest Law School. Winston- Salem, NC.  March 12-14, 1999.

« Read Less

Graduate: 

American Literature 1860-1910

Special Topics: Edith Wharton: From Old New York to the Jazz Age (traditional and online)

Special Topics: Louisa May Alcott and Rebecca Harding Davis

Directed Readings on a variety of writers (Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Horatio Alger, Zitkala-Sa, John Steinbeck, Louisa May Alcott) and topics (the Gothic and Social Reform, the legacy of Transcendentalism, the Progressive Era, American Utopias, the Novel of Manners)

Undergraduate:

Law and Litertaure (online)

Special Topics: Crime, Criminals, and Detectives (online)

Backgrounds of Modern Literature (online)

American Realism and Naturalism

19th Century American Literature

19th Century Women Writers

Introduction to American Literature (online)

Experience of Literature (online)

Research and Argumentative Writing

Expository Writing

« Read Less