Dr. Paul Marchbanks

Education

Degree	Major Emphasis	Institution	Year
Ph.D.	British Literature	UNC Chapel Hill	2006
M.A.	Thesis: Women as Caged Birds in Bronte & Hitchcock	UNC Chapel Hill	2000
B.A.	B.S. in psychology (English double major)	Centre College	1993

Teaching and Research Interests

Intersections among faith, culture and the Arts
Disability Studies, Gothic Literature, Dystopic Literature
Film Studies

Publications, Podcasts, Invited Talks

Film Reviews at Christianity Today
Digging in the Dirt: My YouTube Channel

Selected Presentations

“Redemptively Grotesque Narrative: Confronting Fear by Way of Fictive Immersion.”  West Christianity and Literature Conference. Hope International University. Mar. 20-21, 2025.

“Greater Love: Scare Tactics and the Path to Sacrifice in Stories for Children.”  Southeast Christianity and Literature Conference.  Covenant College.  Oct. 10-12, 2024.

“Anagogic Revelation and Ecumenicism in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Temple of the Holy Ghost.’”  Western Christianity and Literature Conference. Trinity Western University.  May 9-11, 2024.

“Distance and the Art of Forgiveness in Memoir and Film: Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger and Women Talking.” Midwest Christianity and Literature Conference.  Wheaton College.  Oct. 23-24, 2023.

Additional Publications

"The Ineluctable Modality of the Visibly Disabled in James Joyce's Ulysses," Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies.  12.1 (2018).  53-69.

"Scary Truths: Morality and the Differently Abled Mind in Lars von Trier's The Kingdom."  Transnational Horror Cinema: Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque.  Eds. Raphael Raphael and Sophia Siddique Harvey.  Palgrave Macmillan, March 2017. 157-74.

“A Space, A Place: Visions of a Disabled Community in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man.”  Demons of the Body and Mind: Essays on Disability in Gothic Literature. Ed. Ruth Anolik. McFarland, July 2010.  21-34. 

“A Costly Morality: Dependency Care and Mental Difference in the Novels of the Brontë Sisters,” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies.  4.1 (2010), 55-72.

“Hierarchies of Mind: An Abiding Critique of ‘Intellectist’ Ideology and Discourse in Robert Browning’s Poetry,” Victorians Institute Journal, 34 (2006), 93-126.

“From Caricature to Character: The Intellectually Disabled in Dickens’s Novels,” Dickens Quarterly, Part One, 23.1 (March 2006), 3-13.

“From Caricature to Character: The Intellectually Disabled in Dickens’s Novels,” Dickens Quarterly, Part Two, 23.2 (June 2006), 67-84.

“From Caricature to Character: The Intellectually Disabled in Dickens’s Novels,” Dickens Quarterly, Part Three, 23.3 (September 2006), 169-180.

“Lessons in Lunacy: Mental Illness in Liam O’Flaherty’s Famine,” New Hibernia Review, 10.2 (Summer, 2006), 92-105.

“Jane Air: The Heroine as Caged Bird in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca,” La Revue LISA, Vol. 4, no. 4 (2006), 119-30. 

“Susan Mitchell,” “Julia Crottie,” “Elizabeth Brennan,” “Frances Brown.”  Irish Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide, ed. Alexander G. Gonzalez.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Courses Taught

ENGL 354: The Bible as Literature
ENGL 272: Introduction to Film
ENGL 459: Topics in Transatlantic and/or World Literature - The Architecture of Dystopia

Website