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Emma Stark
College of Arts and Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
Assistant Professor of English
estark@andersonuniversity.edu
Springdale 209
Academic Background
Dr. Emma Stark is an Assistant Professor of English at Anderson University. She lives in Anderson, SC with her husband and her pug named Mobes. Her research focuses on the significance of the Bible in nineteenth-century writing, intertextual references in literature, and the power of the written word to forge relationships between readers. She is currently working on an essay on the forgotten nineteenth-century American author, Caroline Chesebro’. In her free time, she loves knitting on her loom, sewing, and watching movies.
BA in English, Metropolitan State University of Denver
MA in English, University of Colorado
Ph.D in Literature, Criticism, and Textual Studies, University of Tennessee
Fast Facts
I love having the opportunity to teach literature in a Christian environment where I can highlight authors’ spiritual backgrounds and scriptural references. Students here are also enthusiastic and eager to explore new ideas in the classroom.
Although it can be challenging to find an academic job teaching literature, I encourage students to go for it if they are truly passionate about teaching and not allow the world to try to discourage them or talk them out of it! For English majors who love writing and literature but don’t want to be teachers, there are also so many possibilities out there! Many jobs need strong writers, good communicators, and critical thinkers and those are the skills where English Majors excel.
In August 2020, I won the John C. Hodges Excellence in Scholarship Award for my essay: “‘A Sweeter Poem Than Any They Could Write’: Female Mental Resilience and Genre Limitations in ‘A Whisper in the Dark’ and A Modern Mephistopheles.” I also won The George Eliot Essay Contest in April 2020 for my essay: “‘They Read With Their Own Eye from Nature’s Own Book’: Imagining Whales in Impressions of Theophrastus Such.”
Students at AU are so excited to learn! I love having enriching class discussions with my students and watching them grow in their skills over time.
American Literature, 19th Century American Literature, Religion in Literature, Herman Melville, Political Significance of Biblical References, Race and Interracial Fellowship in Literature
- “‘A Sweeter Poem Than Any They Could Write’: Woman’s Mental Resilience and Genre Limitations in ‘A Whisper in the Dark’ and A Modern Mephistopheles” In Beyond Little Women: The Secondary Works of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Lauren Hehmeyer (Palgrave Macmillan, Spring 2025. pp. 149-164). – published under the name Emma Butler-Probst
- “Contagious Texts: Readerly Agency and Caroline Chesebro’s Response to Edgar Allan Poe’s Pantheism in Isa, A Pilgrimage.” In Between Worlds: Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Women Writers and Religious Identity, edited by LuElla D’Amico and Lindsay Katzir. University of Edinburgh Press (Forthcoming 2025)
- Review: “The Year in Conferences—2021: SSAWW, 4-7 November, 2021, Baltimore, MD.” Cowritten with Christopher Allan Black, Max Laitman Chapnick, Javiera C. Green, and Lawrence Lorraine Mullen (ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, edited by Christopher Allan Black and LuElla D’Amico, vol. 68, no. 1, 2022, pp. 146–75)
- “‘They Read With Their Own Eye from Nature’s Own Book’: Imagining Whales in Impressions of Theophrastus Such.” (George Eliot Review, vol. 51, Spring 2020. pp. 55-67) – published under the name Emily Butler-Probst
- “Raciocultural Union and ‘Fraternity of Feeling’: Ishmael’s Redemption in Moby-Dick” (Criterion, vol. 10.1, Spring 2017. pp 1-17) – published under the name Emily Butler-Probst