Dr. Rebecca Wigginton

Biography

Rebecca Wigginton's research focuses on Victorian psychiatry notions of selfhood in the nineteenth-century novel, as well as gothic studies, ecogothic literature, science fiction, and young adult literature. She employs interdisciplinary approaches to first-year writing pedagogy. Her current book project examines the pre-history of neural science and explores how Victorian sleepwalkers were perceived within medical, literary, and judicial circles, presenting a visible and sensational embodiment of a multivalent model of consciousness that was gradually accepted in the nineteenth century. Wigginton has published on religious syncretism in contemporary young adult gothic fiction, and she has forthcoming work on ecogothic landscapes in nineteenth-century travelogues and literature from colonial Jamaica. She holds a PhD in Cultural Critical Studies from the University of Pittsburgh.

Research Interests