Research Interests: 19th-century British literature; oral reading; reading history; sound and media studies; literacy and English language pedagogy
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Kate Nesbit is an English PhD candidate (ABD) at the University of Iowa specializing in nineteenth-century British literature. Kate studies recitation, elocution, and oral reading practices.

Kate’s dissertation considers that most popular of Victorian evening entertainments, reading aloud, from the perspective of listeners, especially the rowdy and intractable ones. She studies how novelists deploy these listeners as part of a larger campaign to articulate the value of the novel in an era still suspicious of the form and its effects on an increasingly heterogeneous readership. This project, titled Listening to Reading Aloud: Literacy and the Novel, has earned a Huntington short-term award, as well as three University of Iowa fellowships. In presenting work from this dissertation, Kate earned the Midwest Victorian Studies Association’s William and Mary Burgan Prize for Outstanding Graduate Presentation. She has also published articles on sound and listening in Victorian Poetry (forthcoming), European Romantic Review, and Studies in the Novel. 

Kate has taught both Rhetoric and The Interpretation of Literature at the University of Iowa. She has designed and instructed courses on themes including "Voice and Storytelling," "Reading Bodies: Literature and the Senses" and "Tech Knowledge: Literature, Media and Information." She has also tutored writing at two of the University of Iowa's writing centers: the Rhetoric Writing Center and the Frank Business Communications Center.

Kate served as one of the University's three 2017 Graduate Teaching Fellows and has received the University of Iowa's Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, as well as the English department's W.R. Irwin Award for Teaching Excellence.