Portrait image of Christina Rieger
Christina Rieger

Professor

Contact Information

OFFICE: Preston 217B
PHONE: 814-824-2103

Christy Rieger holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame and a B.A. from the University of Dallas. She teaches classes in British literature, medicine and literature, world literature, and composition. Her composition classes focus on the analysis and practice of life-writing. Additionally, she directs the Center for Teaching Excellence.

She has published widely on Victorian literature, with special emphasis on medicine and literature. Her latest articles examine depictions of drug fiction, the gothic hospital in late-Victorian fiction, and the popular fiction of L. T. Meade, creator of the first medical mystery series. Dr. Rieger's forthcoming essay (for a special issue of the journal Humanities on the Medical Humanities) draws on archival research to analyze conflicting representations of Robert Louis Stevenson as a "frail warrior" during his 1887 stay at the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. She also has a particular interest in writing pedagogy and co-authored a special issue of Journal of Excellence in College Teaching titled “Motivating Millennials: How to Promote Active Reading in an Online Era.

About Dr. Rieger
    • Ph.D. in English, University of Notre Dame
    • B.A. in English, University of Dallas
    • Victorian Literature
    • Medicine and Literature
    • Life-Writing 
    • Writing Pedagogy 
    • Victorian Literature
    • Romantic Literature
    • Trauma and Life-Writing 
    • Popular Victorian Fiction
    • Victorian Poetry 
    • Gothic Literature 
    • COMP 120: Research and Writing
    • "Popular Fiction and the Holmesian Doctor Detective in L. T. Meade’s Stories from the Diary of a Doctor" Victorians Institute Journal 47.2 (2019-20): 115-133.
    •  “Chemical Romance: Genre and Materia Medica in Late-Victorian Drug Fiction.” Victorian Literature and Culture. Fall 2018.
    •  Co-author, with Natalie Mera Ford. “Motivating Millennials: How to Promote Active Reading in an Online Era.” An introduction by the guest editors. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Fall 2016. 1-6. 
    •  “The Value of Net Obscurity: Google Books and Unmediated Texts.” Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Fall 2016. 42-54. 
    •  “St. Bernard's: Terrors of the Light in the Gothic Hospital.” Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties. Eds. Rose Yang and Katherine Healey. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 25-38. 
    •  “Medical Sensationalism in The Crimson Petal and the White and The Dress Lodger. Fashioning the Neo-Victorian: Theories, Authors, Texts. Eds. Susanne Gruss and Nadine Bohm. Routledge. 2014. 153-65.
    • “Everyone Is Ill”: Disease and Class Privilege in Gaskell’s North and South.” Victorian Institute conference. Spartanburg, SC.  October 2022
    •  “The Eros of Illness: W. E. Henley’s In Hospital,” Victorian Institute conference. Charlotte, NC. October 2021. 
    •  “Genre and the Holmesian Doctor Detective in the Medical Mysteries of L. T. Meade.” North American Victorian Studies Association conference. Columbus, OH. Oct. 2019.
    •   “The Frail Warrior”: Robert Louis Stevenson as the Manly Invalid at Saranac Lake” Victorian Institute conference. Greenville, SC. October 2017.
    •  “’See the Value of Imagination': Sherlock Holmes and the Arts and Humanities.” Victorian Institute conference. Raleigh-Durham, NC. October 2016.
    •  “Promoting International Authors Online: How Can We Sustain the Benefits of Digital Projects?” College English Association of Ohio conference. Kent State. Kent, OH. April 2016.
    • “Mystery and Material Culture in the Late-Victorian Transforming Drug Narrative”. Victorians Institute conference. Charlotte, NC, October 2014. 
    • "St. Bernard’s: The Economy of Medical Evidence in the Late-Victorian Gothic Hospital.” North American Victorian Studies conference. Pasadena, CA. October 2013.

    Learn more about Dr. Christy Rieger on LinkedIn