Richard P. Veler Endowed Chair in English
Professor of English
Department Chair
crichards@wittenberg.edu
(937) 327-7053
Hollenbeck Hall 122
Profile
Dr. Richards fell in love with literature during a seminar on John Keats her first semester at Brown University, where she earned her B.A. in 1984, and although she redirected her passions toward eighteenth-century literature during her graduate days at New York University (Ph.D 1996) she has remained a committed teacher and scholar ever since. Her teaching interests include eighteenth-century literature, the woman writer, war, romance, and how the study of all of the above intersects with living a meaningful life. A Fulbright Scholar, she is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching Behn's Oroonoko and editor of Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrong of Woman paired with William Godwin's Memoirs of Wollstonecraft's life. Widely published, Dr. Richards is also a contributing editor for The Scriblerian.
- Cynthia shares her reflections on running for a local office and her campaign in .
Notable Accomplishments
- Richard P. Veler Endowed Chair in English, 2021-2026
- Project Lead, NEH Grant Proposal, "The Healing Humanities: Creating Health Pathways on Campus and in the Community," Spring 2023
- Editorial Board, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 2022-2025
- Award for Faculty Excellence, Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education, 2021 & 2018
- Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Award, 2021
- Excellence in Community Service Award, 麻豆传媒 University, 2021
- Collegium Award for Excellence and Innovation, 麻豆传媒 University, 2018
- Lawrence Ruff Visiting Chair in Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Dayton, Spring 2016
- Woman of the Year, 麻豆传媒 University, 2014 and 2015
- Edith B. and Frank C. Matthies Teaching Award, 麻豆传媒 University, 2014
- Fulbright Alumni Ambassador, 2009-2010
- Fulbright Scholar, 2004-2005, Czech Republic
- American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Innovative Teaching Award, 2002 (Transatlantic Connections)
- Omicron Delta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award 2000
Courses Taught (selected)
- Narrative Medicine
- Theorizing Tristram Shandy
- Editing the Classics: Topics in Advanced Composition
- Making Romance: Themes and Traditions in Literature
- English 101E: Memory, Memorial and Restitution
- Private Matters, Social Networks: Reading the Eighteenth Century in a Digital Age
- Bad Girls: From Eve to Mary Wollstonecraft (Women and Literature I)
- Love and War in the Eighteenth Century
- Transatlantic Connections: Studies in the Eighteenth Century
- Literary Form and Interpretation: The Language of Love and Loss
- British Literary Genealogies: Inventing the Self
- Honors Seminar: The Darkness Within
Degrees
- Ph.D. New York University 1996
- B.A. Brown University 1984
Research Interests
- Narrative Medicine (Narrative-Based Medicine Digital Certification, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 2023)
- Eighteenth-Century Literature
- Women and Gender Studies
- Aphra Behn
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Trauma Theory
- Disability Studies
- Pedagogy
Selected Publications
- Co-Editor (with Erin Peters), Early Modern Trauma: Europe and the Atlantic World (University of Nebraska Press, August 2021).
- "Imperfect Enjoyments and Female Disappointments: Understanding Trauma in Aphra Behn鈥檚 鈥楾he Disappointment鈥 and Oroonoko," University of Nebraska Press, August 2021.
- "Belatedness in the Eighteenth Century and What to Do about It," Literature Compass, Winter 2021.
- "Living Memory, Embodied Experience, and What Gets Lost in Alexander Pope鈥檚 鈥楻ape of the Lock,鈥" English Language Notes, (special issue on memory), Fall 2020.
- "Teasing Out Desire: Eliza Haywood, the Novel, and Early Women Writer鈥檚 Course," Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eliza Haywood, ed, Tiffany Potter, New York: MLA, 2020.
- "Reflections: The Body in the Body of My Work," Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Summer 2019.
- "History without Trauma: Recovering Loss in the Eighteenth Century," The Future of Feminist Eighteenth Century Scholarship: Beyond Recovery, New York: Routledge, 2017.
- "Wit at War: The Poetry of John Wilmot and the Trauma of War," Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Fall 2014).
- "Anger and the Liberated Girl,"聺 Mary Wollstonecraft: Interpretations and Reflections, ed. Michaela Mudure. (Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Napoca Star Publishing, 2014).
- Co-Editor (with Mary Ann O'Donnell), Approaches to Teaching Behn's Oroonoko, (New York: MLA, 2013).
- "Transatlantic Crossings: Teaching Oroonoko with The Widow Ranter,"聺 Approaches to Teaching Behn's Oroonoko, MLA World Literature Teaching Series (New York: MLA, 2013).
- "Interrogating Oroonoko: Torture in Oroonoko and a Fiction of Power,"聺 Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Summer 2013).
- "To Whom Does the New World Belong? Teaching The Widow Ranter in a Transatlantic Context," Approaches to Teaching British Women Playwrights of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, MLA World Literature Teaching Series (New York: MLA, 2010).
- "The Body of Her Work, The Work of Her Body: Accounting for the Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft,"聺 Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Summer 2009).
- "Romancing the Sublime; Why Mary Wollstonecraft fell in love with that cad Gilbert Imlay," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (Spring 2006).
- Editor, The Wrongs of Woman; or Maria and Memoirs of the Authors of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,"聺 with introduction, notes, inter-text essays, appendices (Glen Allen, VA: College Publishing, 2003).
- "Revising History, 'Dumbing Down,' and Imposing Silence: Understanding the Later Career of Mary Hays," Eighteenth-Century Women 3 (November 2003).
- "Fair Trade: The Language of Love and Commerce in Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 30 (Spring 2000).
- "The 'Pleasures of Complicity': Sympathetic Identification and the Female Reader in Early Eighteenth-Century Amatory Fiction,"聺 The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Fall 1995).
- "Sylvia: The Unintended Female Reader in Aphra Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister,"聺 Michigan Feminist Studies (Spring 1995).
Selected Articles, Interviews, and Web Publications (solicited and/or editorial board reviewed)
- "The Duty to Teach and Restore Bodily Autonomy," Intersections, Spring 2023.
- "The Public Service of Higher Education: What I Learned from Running for State Representative," Inside Higher Education, (August 2021).
Books in Progress
- The Body, Trauma, and War, 1667-1798, (monograph), first option, University of Nebraska Press.
- Literature as Clinic: Patient Narratives of the Eighteenth Century, co-edited collection with Lilith Todd, preliminary stages.
Recent Academic Presentations
- "Making the Athletic Body a Healthy Body: Transdisciplinary Collaborations between Health Humanities, Disability Studies, and College Athletic Programs," Creating Space: Canada鈥檚 Annual Health Humanities Conference, Quebec City, Quebec, April 2023.
- "The Walking Cure: Trauma as Treatment in James Boswell鈥檚 Tour of the Hebrides," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St. Louis, Missouri, March 2023.
- "Trauma in Undergraduate Nursing Students, and the Vocational Spaces of Narrative Medicine," 10th International Health Humanities Consortium Conference (virtual) March 25-27, 2022.