Scholar Spotlight: Molly Granatino
“I help students improve their writing and research skills, as well as their ability to analyze a piece of literature.”
Molly Granatino
Teaching Assistant Professor
Department of English
I teach a range of English classes, from first-year composition to introduction to fiction.
My research examines the intersection of architecture, narration, and subjectivity in the mid-Victorian novel. My work departs from the idea that architecture in these novels is always restrictive and constraining. Instead, I suggest that architecture can be an expansive and liberating tool for narration.
I am particularly interested in the way authors use architectural imagery to give their female narrators a vehicle for providing tangibility to their subjective experiences. As a result, the reader gains unprecedented access to a heroine’s internal thoughts and emotions. For example, in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, the narrator captures both the physical reality of her surroundings and the emotional truth of her experiences within those spaces.
Why I Do What I Do
My mom read Jane Eyre to me when I was in elementary school. While I didn’t understand everything—I was hooked! That initial exposure led to a lifelong interest in Victorian novels and their houses and heroines.
Currently Working On
Teaching the course Death, Dying and the Undead (English 254 Themes in Literature) during the fall semester.
We will look at the countless ways the universal and inevitable human experience of dying is represented in literature, from carpe diem poetry to the undead in Dracula.
By Amy Beth Miller