Public Scholarship
My greatest strength is my curiosity. I'm curious about you, your work, and how we can best get the ideas in your head out onto the page. Whether it's ensuring the logical soundness of an argument, the precision of your grammar and syntax, or making sure your voice is the one your reader hears, I lead with questions and follow through with excitement. It's your writing; I'm here to help make it better.
I hold a PhD in English from Duke University. I have over a decade's experience teaching writing at the high school and university level. I have worked as a developmental and copy editor guiding clients, students, and colleagues through successful writing projects ranging from complex, nationally-competitive grant applications to published pieces in both prestigious academic journals and public-facing literary magazines.
Below you will find a sampling of the kinds of projects I've edited. Whether it's a research article, a piece of public writing that translates that research into more direct prose, or marketing and blog posts, my services will make your writing more clear, more persuasive, and more effective.
Public Scholarship
Nota about the Dante's Library project for a special issue of Bibliotheca Dantesca on Dante and Digital Humanities
"This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This ...
Journal Articles
Abstract: The neoliberal individual, according to critics like Wendy Brown and Michel Foucault, treats all spheres of life as subject to utility maximization: Whether deciding on a job, a house, or a romantic partner-everything is treated according to a logic of economy.
Abstract. How can an economic model designed to eliminate waste produce nothing but? The answer, according to Samuel Beckett's Watt, can be found in the system of economic relations presupposed by the Anglo-Irish Big House novels that emerged after the 1800 Acts of Union.
Abtract: It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no sex in Jane Austen's fiction. Even for readers new to her work, Austen represents a sense of propriety in which sex is thought to play no role. In Austen criticism, references to "chasteness"-of her characters, her prose, herself-abound, although opinions diverge as to what we ought to make of this apparent lack.
Blog Posts
Do you read crime novels, find yourself scanning the daily newspaper crime report, or love watching true crime television shows? During the 2022 Spring semester, Professor Michael D'Alessandro introduced an updated version of English 290S-2.01, "American Crime, 1800-1914: Fiction and Film."
This spring, Duke English has had the honor of hosting Kenyan author and journalist Peter Kimani as its Blackburn Artist in Residence. His novel, Dance of the Jakaranda - a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" - was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the inaugural Big Book Award in the UK.
Writer Caryl Phillips, Professor of English at Yale University, returned during Fall Semester 2021 as the Blackburn Writer-in-Residence in the English Department at Duke. During his visit, Phillips participated in a roundtable discussion, visited Duke English classes, and read from his work along with two English faculty members.
This fall, Welsh novelist Sophie Mackintosh, American poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and Mexican novelist Fernando Flores visited Professor Maren's English 290S class, "World Building: From Genesis to Lil Nas X." Students had the opportunity to ask these authors questions about elements of their writing.