Melissa Bailes

Professor - English

School of Liberal Arts
Stone Center Departments
The Stone Center
People Classification
Faculty
Tulane Affiliation
Affiliated Faculty
Region
  • General Latin America
Melissa Bailes

Biography

Melissa Bailes is an associate professor of English specializing in British literature of the long eighteenth century (1660-1830), transatlantic and transnational studies, and the history of science.  She has written articles and book chapters focusing on the Caribbean as well as Latin and South America.  She especially works on ideas about gender and colonialism as they relate to literature and the environment.  Her first book, Questioning Nature: British Women’s Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750-1830 (U Virginia P), won the 2017 Book Prize from the British Society for Literature and Science.  Her second book, Regenerating Romanticism: Botany, Sensibility, and Originality in British Literature, 1750-1830, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2023.  Bailes's research has been supported by long-term fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the American Association of University Women, and the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

Courses

The Nature and Culture of 18th Century Science, Restoration and 18th Century Drama, Enlightenment Literature and Culture

Research

British Literature, 1660-1830; History of Science; Enlightenment Thought; Women’s and Gender Studies; Transatlanticism; British Empire and Colonialism; Digital Humanities

Degrees

  • Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, English, 2012
  • B.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, English and History, 2001

Academic Experience

Academic Experience
  • Associate Professor, Tulane University, 2018-
  • Environmental Studies Program Faculty Advisory Committee, Tulane University, 2013-
  • Assistant Professor, Tulane University, 2012-2018
  • Teaching Assistant, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2005-2012
  • Digital and Research Assistant, UIUC, 2011

Distinctions

  • Linda Hall Library Fellowship 2020-2021
  • Barbara Thom Post-doctoral Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2015-2016
  • Glick Research Fellowship, Tulane University, 2015-2016
  • Chawton House Library Fellowship, Hampshire, UK, 2013

Selected Publications

  • 2023. Regenerating Romanticism: Botany, Sensibility, and Originality in British Literature, 1750-1830. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
  • 2020. Charles Morris Lansley. Charles Darwin’s Debt to the Romantics: How Alexander von Humboldt, Goethe and Wordsworth Helped Shape Darwin’s View of Nature. Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. Pp. 274. $90.95 (cloth). The Journal of British Studies, 59(3), 705–706
  • 2020. Fruit and Horticultural Symbolism in British Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century. The Eighteenth Century (Lubbock), 61(1), 123–126.
  • 2019. The Aesthetics of Botany and Empire. The Eighteenth Century, 60(4), 479–482.
  • 2019. “Transformations of Gender and Race in Maria Riddell’s Transatlantic Biopolitics.” Eighteenth-century fiction 32.1 (2019): 123–144.
  • 2018. “Cultivated for Consumption: Botany, Colonial Cannibalism, and National/Natural History in Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 59.4: 513-533
  • 2017. Questioning Nature: British Women’s Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750-1830. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.