Nicki Buscemi

Program: English Ph.D.
Began program in 2000
Area of Study: Victorian and Modernist British Literature

Office: 73 EPB
E-Mail: nicole-buscemi@uiowa.edu

After completing my M.A. at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I arrived at the University of Iowa dedicated to the study of modernist texts. However, feeling that I should know more about the era against which I had always heard that modernism reacted, I began my studies here at Iowa by taking classes in Victorian literature. Much to my surprise, I realized in the process that the very experimentation and focus on language and meaning that had intrigued me in modernist works was displayed in its own way in a number of Victorian novels. In addition, these Victorian works, even more than the modernist ones with which I had grown familiar, foregrounded the act of storytelling itself˜a key interest of mine. Thus, my interests broadened to include both Victorian and modernist literature.

My specific focus now is on the relationship between narrative and sickness in Victorian and modernist novels. I am especially interested in recent work being done with narrative theory within the field of medicine (particularly concerning patient narratives), and I am also interested in the medical case study as narrative form and its influence on the literature of the Victorian period.