Mary Ellen Bellanca joined USC Sumter in fall 2003.

She teaches, or has taught, the following courses:

ENGL 101, Composition
ENGL 102, Composition and Literature
ENGL 282, Fiction
ENGL 284, Drama
ENGL 288, British Literature I
ENGL 289, British Literature II (now absorbed into 288)
ENGL 412, Victorian Literature
ENGL 460, Advanced Writing
ENGL 463/ABUS 345, Business Writing/Business Communication

Education

Ph.D. in English, University of Delaware, 1998 
M.A. in English, University of Delaware, 1993 
B.A. in English, Western Maryland College (now known as McDaniel College), 1980

Publications

Book

Daybooks of Discovery: Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770-1870.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Jane Loudon’s Wildflowers, Popular Science, and the Victorian Culture of Knowledge.”  Victorian Writers and the Environment: Ecocritical Perspectives.  Ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison.  Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.  174-187.

“After-Life-Writing: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals in the Memoirs of William Wordsworth.” European Romantic Review 25.2 (2014): 201-218.

“The Monstrosity of Predation in Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds.’” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 18.1 (Winter 2011): 26-46.

“Emily Shore.”  Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists.  Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2004.

“Science, Animal Sympathy, and Anna Barbauld’s ‘The Mouse’s Petition.’” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.1 (Fall 2003): 47-67.

“Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Journal and the Poetics of Natural History.” Nineteenth-Century Prose 25.2 (Fall 1998): 45-62.

“Recollecting Nature: George Eliot’s ‘Ilfracombe Journal’ and Victorian Women’s Natural History Writing.” Modern Language Studies 27.3, 4 (Fall/Winter 1997): 19-36.

“Alien Voices, Ancient Echoes: Bakhtin, Dialogism, and Pope's Essay on Criticism.” Papers on Language and Literature 30 (March 1994): 57-72.

Book Reviews

Review of The Loudons and the Gardening Press: A Victorian Cultural Industry by Sarah Dewis (Ashgate Publishers, 2014). 

Nineteenth-Century Prose 42.2 (Fall 2015): 439-441.

Review of Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England’s Disciples of Flora, 1780-1870 by Judith W. Page and Elise M. Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 

Victorian Studies 55.2 (Winter 2013): 342-344. 

Selected Presentations

“Literary Detective Work: Finding the Forgotten Story,” USC Sumter Faculty Seminar Series, October 2017.

“The Amanuensis is the Message: Isabella Fenwick, Auto/biography, and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Nineteenth-Century Reception,” British Women Writers Conference, UNC Chapel Hill, June 2017.

“She Blinded Me with Science: Victorian Women Go Wild About Botany,” USC Sumter Faculty Seminar Series, March 2016.

“Wild About Plants: Victorian Women Dig Botany,” Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, USC Columbia, September 2015.

“Joining the Club: Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, and the Periodical Press,” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, Washington, DC, July 2014.

“Snakes Alive!  Teaching a Conservation Ethic in First-Year Composition,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Los Angeles, January 2011.

“Extorting Dorothy Wordsworth: Posthumous Identities, Compulsory Performance,” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference, University of Tampa, March 2010.

“The Voice of the Tortoise: Animal Subjectivity in Gilbert White and Verlyn Klinkenborg,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, University of Victoria, British Columbia, June 2009.

“Avian Apocalypse in Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds,’” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, University of Southern Maine, Portland, June 2007.

“Grounding Gilbert White: The Naturalist’s Journals as Encounters with the Real,” Association for Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Boston, June 2003.

“Authorizing Observation: Naturalists’ Diaries and Authentic Knowledge in Victorian Periodicals,” Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Annual Meeting, Vancouver, B.C., July 1998

Awards and Recent Grants

Hugh T. Stoddard Sr. Award for Outstanding Faculty Member, USC Sumter, 2016

RISE Grant (“Unpublished Contextual Materials on Dorothy Wordsworth’s Reader Reception”), USC Office of Research, March 2017

RISE Grant (“Jane Loudon’s British Wild Flowers”), USC Office of Research, March 2015

Best Article Prize, European Romantic Review, 2014

RISE Grant (“Archival Research in Wordsworth Trust Collections”), USC Office of Research, March 2013

Arts and Humanities Grant (“Dorothy Wordsworth and Her Readers”), USC Office of the Provost, March 2010

Outstanding Scholarship Award, USC Sumter, 2007