Mary Bowden

Biography

Mary Bowden specializes in British literature of the long nineteenth century, focusing particularly on environmental topics. Her current book project, "Radical Science: Plants, Agency, and British Narrative, 1800-1900" explores how nineteenth-century advances in plant science influenced how literary authors positioned plants in narrative fiction. Her work brings together current discussions in critical plant studies, science and literature, the environmental humanities, and narrative theory.

Professor Bowden's teaching interests include nineteenth-century literature, science and literature, environmental topics, nature writing, and Native American literature.
 

Recent Publications

“An Empire of Red Weed: Environmental Infrastructure in H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds” in “Infrastructure,” special issue of Victorian Literature and Culture, eds. Timothy P. Watson and Zarena Aslami, vol. 52, no. 3, 2024, pp. 313-32.

“Cultivating Arboreal Time in Hardy’s Fiction” in “Unusual Gardens: Towards a Poetics of Cultivated Earth” special issue of Dibur, vol. 11, Spring 2022.

“Vegetal Being in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon: The Narrative Challenge of Nineteenth-Century Plant Science,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 28, no. 3, 2021, pp. 966-85.

“Night-Soil and Nation-Building: Trollope’s The Prime Minister, the Guano Economy, and Victorian Sustainability,” Victorian Review, vol. 47, no. 2, 2021, pp. 79-96.