Tim Carens

Professor and Director of Literature and Film and Director of British Studies

Tim Carens has been teaching at the College of Charleston since 1998. He specializes on British literature and culture of the nineteenth century, teaching courses on Gothic literature, Oscar Wilde, imperial literature, Jane Austen in novel and film, classic children’s literature, iconic heroines and other courses on the Victorian period and the Victorian novel. He enjoys directing independent studies on particular topics or individual writers such as Dickens, Hardy, the Brontës, Conan Doyle, etc.. His recent research has focused on idolatrous desire in the marriage plot, Charles Kingsley and the Condition-of-England novel, the construction of middle-class masculinity and the “gentle art” of angling, the intersection of Victorian literature and imperial rhetoric, and the representation of the English professor in contemporary popular culture.

Education

Ph.D., English, New York University

M.A., English, New York University

A.B., History and Literature, Harvard College

Research Interests

• Victorian Literature and Culture
• British imperial studies and postcolonial theory
• Nineteenth-century novels
• “Masculinity and Sport”
• The English professor in popular culture