As finals loom closer, breaks are needed from the hours of studying and stressing about deadlines. Here is another fun interview with Professor Rebecca Nesvet as a distraction! Professor Nesvet teaches 19th British literature, modern world drama, and digital humanities. Her research concerns Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and (more recently) “Sweeney Todd” creator James Malcolm Rymer and his radical and Romantic contexts.
First tell me a bit about yourself and anything you’d love the students here to know. Hobbies, family, where were you before UWGB, etc
Before UWGB I was a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill. I have a cat named after a woman who wrote science fiction / space fantasy over a century before Mary Shelley and a rooster named Dorian Gray Rooster.
If you would have a superpower, what would it be and why?
The ability to appear not-a-woman to those people who make trouble for women because we’re women.
What is your favorite piece of literature?
Frankenstein.
What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?
Got to teach at UWGB
What is your favorite part about UWGB?
The students. You want to be here. You take charge of your education and lives. For the most part, you are eager to make your education improve the lives of people other than yourselves.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you have and why?
Water
Internet connection and a communication device
Paul Brantlinger’s book Crusoe’s Footsteps, in part to remind me what my purpose was before being cut off from society, and part to remind me why we have this cultural preoccupation with the desert island self-reliance fantasy.
Who has inspired you in your life?
High school drama teacher.
The Chartists.
What did you want to be when you were younger?
An oceanographer. That didn’t work out.
What is your favorite book to movie adaption?
Right now, Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2012).