Presentations

  • The Trouble with Trilobites, NAVSA, Indiana University. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/11/2023.
  • “Just Like Bees: Insect Utopias of WH Hudson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), Betheleheim PA, Sep 2022 . Conference Paper, Presented, 09/24/2022.
  • “Raising Dinosauria,” Building Dinosaurs, Building Humans (Symposium), University of Birmingham Literature and Science Lab, Sep 2022 . Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 09/16/2022.
  • “Earth’s Ends: Prehistoric Horror and Polar Fantasy at the Fin de Siècle,” Victorian Apocalypse II: Nightmares and Resurrections (Symposium), UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, Mar 2022 . Invited Talk/Keynote, Submitted, 03/12/2022.
  • “Wilderness Pending: John Muir’s ‘Adventure with a a Dog and a Glacier,’” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS), Los Angeles CA, Mar 2020 . Conference Paper, Presented, 03/06/2020.
  • “Prisoners Together: Disability and Captivity at the London Zoo,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) . Conference Paper, Presented, 03/17/2019.
  • “The Fly,” Environmental Humanities Film Series Post-Screening Panel. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 01/10/2019.
  • “Singing for their Suppers: Arthur Morrison and the Animal Economics at the Zoo,” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS), Palm Spring CA, Nov 2018 . Conference Paper, Presented, 11/10/2018.
  • “Prying Through the Bars: Children and Animals at the London Zoo,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), St. Petersburg FL, Oct 2018 . Conference Paper, Presented, 10/14/2018.
  • “Multi-Plot Menagerie: the Periodical Press and the London Zoo,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS), San Francisco CA, Mar 2018 . Conference Paper, Presented, 03/16/2018.
  • “Captive Fame: Animality, Celebrity, and the Victorian Zoo,” Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah, Feb 2018 . Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 02/20/2018.
  • “If Trees Had Tongues: From Muir’s Haven to Blackwood’s Horror,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), Banff, AB, Nov 2017 . Conference Paper, Presented, 11/11/2017.
  • “Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear: Animal Ethics and the Object Lesson,” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS) and Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada (VSAWC), Vancouver BC, May 2017 . Conference Paper, Presented, 05/26/2017.
  • "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Irregular Boys," North American Victorian Studies Association, Arizona State University. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/04/2016.
  • "The Iguanodon and the Aztec." Victorian Institutes, North Carolina State University. Conference Paper, Presented, 10/15/2016.
  • “Alien Abduction: The War of the Worlds’ Emigration to America,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, Jul 2015 . Conference Paper, Presented, 07/12/2015.
  • “Savvy Birds, Spoiled Fruits: Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales and the Decay of Nature,” Symposium: Oscar Wilde and the Culture of Childhood, UCLA, May 2015 . Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 05/29/2015.
  • “And Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth Once More: James De Mille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder and Frank Savile’s Beyond the Great South Wall,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS), Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, Apr 2015. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/18/2015.
  • “The Cultivation of the Caveman and the Evolving Story of Human Evolution," Children's Literature Association Conference 6/14. Conference Paper, Submitted, 01/15/2014.
  • "The Invisible Eye of the Lady Detective," North American Victorian Studies Association, Pasadena CA. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2013.
  • “Foreign Air: Human and Inhuman Networks in M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sep. 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 09/30/2012.
  • “The Playtime Naturalists: Animals, Children, and Ludic Evolution,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA), Vanderbilt University. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2011.
  • “How Big is a Dinosaur?”, NAVSA, McGill University, Montreal. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2010.

Geographical Regions of Interest

  • Spain
    I am on the Advisory Board of a literary journal, Amaltea, based in Madrid.
  • United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
    Archival Research at the London Zoo, British Library, Museum of Childhood and Natural History Museum, London UK - October 2017.

Publications

  • Jessica Straley & Kristine Moruzi and Michelle J. Smith (2023). “Captive Animals and Disabled Children at the London Zoo” . Palgrave MacMillan. Published, 10/16/2023.
  • Jessica Straley & Jade Dillon and Eleanor Spencer-Reagan (2023). The Feral Child and the More-Than-Human Family” . Routledge. Published, 10/16/2023.
  • Jessica Straley & Leslee Thorne-Murphy (2022). Special Conference Issue. Vol. 44. Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Published, 12/19/2022.
  • Jessica Straley & Leslee Thorne-Murphy (2022). Nineteenth-Century Strata. Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Vol. 44. Published, 12/19/2022.
  • Jessica Straley (2019). “Children’s Literature” in The Routledge Handbook to Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Talia Schaffer and Dennis Denisoff. Routledge. Published, 11/15/2019.
  • Jessica Straley (2019). “For the Trees Have no Tongues: Algernon Blackwood and the Weirdness of Plant Communication” . Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism. Vol. 4. Published, 11/01/2019.
  • Jessica Straley (2019). Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature by Victoria Ford Smith, and The Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry: A Study of Children’s Verse in English, ed. by Louise Wakely-Mulroney and Louise Joy,. Vol. 61:2. Victorian Studies. Published, 02/15/2019.
  • “Young Frankensteins: Graphic Children’s Texts and the 21st-Century Monster” in Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular Culture, eds. Dennis Cutchins and Dennis Perry, (Manchester University Press, 2018). Published, 10/01/2018.
  • “Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales and the Evolution of Lying,” in Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood, ed. Joseph Bristow (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2017). Published, 12/06/2017.
  • "The Undying Joke about the Dying Girl: Charles Dickens to Roman Dirge" in Drawing on the Victorians: The Palimpsest of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Graphic Texts, Anna Maria Jones and Rebecca N. Mitchell (eds) (Ohio UP, 2017). Published, 01/06/2017.
  • Jessica Straley (2016). Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature.. Cambridge University Press. Published, 06/06/2016.
  • "The Queen's Croquet-Ground," Collaborative Online Annotations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Published by Public Domain Review, 20 Aug. 2015. Published, 08/20/2015.
    https://medium.com/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderlan...
  • Straley, Jessica (2010). “Love and Vivisection: Wilkie Collins’ Experiment in Heart and Science”. Nineteenth-Century Literature. Vol. 65. Published, 12/2010.
  • Jessica Straley (2007). “Of Beasts and Boys: Kingsley, Spencer and the Theory of Recapitulation”. Victorian Studies. Vol. 49. Published, 09/2007.