Julia Mccord Chavez

Julia McCord Chavez, Associate Professor of English, specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, Victorian print culture, and composition studies. Her research and teaching interests include transatlantic studies, gender studies, and the field of law and literature.

Chavez's wide-ranging interests have grown out of her diverse education and training. A native Midwesterner, she received her B.A., magna cum laude, from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, with a major in English and minors in art history and anthropology. A deep commitment to social justice next led her to earn a J.D., magna cum laude, from Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington. After working in the legal publishing field for several years, Chavez returned to her original passion — English literature — at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Literary Studies with a major concentration in nineteenth-century British literature and a minor concentration in art history and material culture. Her doctoral work examined Victorian fiction that was serialized (and thus released in installments over time) and the relationship between partial publication and reading practices that promote critical consciousness, especially for female readers.

Interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of Chavez's classroom. Her teaching of composition and literature seeks to bring texts to life for students through historical, cultural, and aesthetic contexts. Social justice remains a focus for Chavez, as well, whether she is teaching a first-year college writing course on globalization, an upper-division course on the Romantics or Victorians, a dedicated author course on Charles Dickens, or a survey of "Women's Literature" from Mary Wollstonecraft to Margaret Atwood.