Margaret Toth

Professor, English

Education

  • PHD, Tufts University
  • MA, Boston College
  • BA, College of Wooster

Courses Taught

ENGL 110      College Writing

ENGL 151      Roots of Literature (FYS): Haunted Homes

ENGL 255      Introduction to Film Studies

ENGL 256      Types of Film Experience: Film Noir

ENGL 256      Types of Film Experience: American Horror Cinema

ENGL 275      The Short Story: American Gothic

ENGL 292      Special Topics in Literature: Hollywood Fictions

ENGL 306      Introduction to Literary Study

ENGL 374      The American Novel to 1914: Lust, Passion, and the Body

ENGL 385       Film Narrative

ENGL395        Senior Seminar: The Birth of Women's Crime Fiction

ENGL 395       Senior Seminar: Authorship in Hollywood's Golden Age

 

  • Research
    Research and Teaching Interests
    • Race, Gender, and Sexuality in U.S. Literature & Film
    • Film Noir; Horror Film
    • Adaptation Studies
    • Mid-Century Women's Crime Fiction
    • Edith Wharton

     

     

  • Publications and Scholarly Activities
    Peer & Editor Reviewed Articles:
    • "'As Thru a Glass Darkly': Trauma, Survivorship, and the Crime Genre in Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman," Shirley Jackson Studies, 1.1, 2023. https://shirleyjacksonstudies.org/?p=109
    • With Teresa Ramoni, "'Their Voices Ring in My Ears': Laura, the Fugue, and Adaptation," Adaptation (Oxford), 14.1, 2021, pp. 136-156.
    • "Edith Wharton's Prose Spectacle in the Age of Cinema." Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence: New Centenary Essays, Ed. Arielle Zibrak, Bloomsbury, 2020.
    • "Spiritual Practitioners, Storytelling Markets, and the Economics of Consolation in Edith Wharton's Postwar Fiction." The Edith Wharton Review, 34.1, 2018, pp. 13-32.
    • "Shaping Modern Bodies: Edith Wharton on Weight, Dieting, and Visual Media." Rpt. in Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Norton Critical Edition, vol. 2, Ed. Elizabeth Ammons, 2018, pp. 389-401.
    • "Seeing Edith Wharton's Ghosts: The Alternative Gaze on Page and Screen." Journal of Narrative Theory vol. 47, no.1, Winter 2017, pp. 26-55.
    • "Authorship, Gender, and the Modern Muse in Edith Wharton's Vance Weston Novels: A Response to Judith P. Saunders." Connotations, 2017. http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/toth0261.htm
    • "Orientalism, Modernism, and Gender in Edith Wharton's Late Novels." Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, Ed. Meredith Goldsmith and Emily Orlando, UP of Florida, 2016.
    • "Memento's Postmodern Noir Fantasy: Place, Domesticity and Gender Identity." The Cinema of Chrisopher Nolan: Imagining the Impossible, Ed. Jacqueline Furby and Stuart Joy, Columbia UP, 2015.
    • "Shaping Modern Bodies: Edith Wharton on Dieting, Weight, and Visual Media." Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 60, no. 4, Winter 2014, pp. 711-739. 
    • "María Cristina Mena, Transnationalism, and Mass Media: Untold Stories in the Archive." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 30, no. 2, December 2013, pp. 331-354.
    • Introduction and Edition of "My Protocol for Our Sister Americas" (1943) by María Cristina Chambers (née Mena). Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 30, no. 2, December 2013, pp. 355-360.
    • "Staged Bodies: Passing, Performance, and Masquerade in Charles W. Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars." MELUS, vol. 37, no. 4, Winter 2012, pp. 69-91.
    • "Race and Imperialism." Edith Wharton In Context, Ed. Laura Rattray, Cambridge UP, 2012.
    • “Framing the Body:  Imperialism and Visual Discourse in María Cristina Mena’s Short Fiction.”  Legacy:  A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 26, no. 1, 2009, pp. 92-118.
    • “Decolonizing Pedagogy:  Teaching Louise Erdrich’s The Bingo Palace.”  Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 19, no. 1, Spring, 2007, pp. 91-116.

    Other Publications

    • Rev. of Bethany Wood's Women Adapting: Bringing Three Serials of the Roaring Twenties to Stage and Screen (U of Iowa P). The Edith Wharton Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2020, pp. 72-76.
    • With Sydney Kukoda ('19) and Alexzandra Tsamisis ('20), "Lust, Passion, and the Body in Sentimental Fragments from Early US Publications." Just Teach One. Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life. July 2018. http://jto.common-place.org/2018/07/10/toth/
    • Rev. of Donna Campbell's Bitter Tastes: Literary Naturalism and Early Cinema in American Women's Writing (U of GA P). The Edith Wharton Review, vol. 33, no. 2, 2017, pp. 398-402.
    • Guest Blog. "The Fad for the Orient: Early-Twentieth Century Trade Catalogues and U.S. Fiction." Winterthur Unreserved. 4 April 2017. http://museumblog.winterthur.org/2017/04/04/the-fad-for-the-orient-early-twentieth-century-trade-catalogues-and-u-s-fiction/
     

    Select Conference Papers:

    • June 2022, "1940s Domestic Noir: Adapting Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall." The Association of Adaptation Studies, Lisbon, Portugal
    • June 2021, "Dark Journeys: Adapting Women's Noir Fiction from the 1940s." The Association of Adaptation Studies, Edinburgh, Scotland (Virtual)
    • November 2018, “The Age of Cinema: Edith Wharton’s Dialogue with Film.” The Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver, CO
    • October 2017, "Edith Wharton, Adaptation, and the Literary Marketplace." The Literature and Film Association, Missoula, MT
    • July 2017, "Entering Middlebrow Territory: Edith Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon and Its Commercial Afterlives." The Society for the Study of American Women Writers' International Conference, Bordeaux, France
    • June 2016, "Modern Visions: Clairvoyance in Wharton's Post-War Literature." Edith Wharton in Washington, Washington, D.C.
    • May 2016, "Staging Spirituality: Wharton and Orientalist Material Culture." Edith Wharton Society Panel. The American Literature Association, San Francisco
    • November 2015, "Seeing Edith Wharton's Ghosts: The Threshold of Adaptation." The Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia
    • October 2014, "Adapting Geography: Place, Land, and the Industrial Frontier in Oil! and There Will Be Blood." The Literature/Film Association, Missoula, MT
    • June 2014, "Authorial Reinvention: María Cristina Mena and Middlebrow Writing." Inventing the Middlebrow, St. Paul
    • October 2012, "Writing, Revising, Belonging: María Cristina Mena and Authorship." The Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver
    • June 2012, "Edith Wharton and Orientalism." Edith Wharton in Florence: A Sesquicentennial Conference, Florence, Italy
    • November 2010, “Visual Media and African-American Modernism.” MELUS Panel. SAMLA, Atlanta
    • October 2009, “Diets, Corsets, and the Technologically-Produced Image: Wharton and Women’s Visual Cultures.” Edith Wharton Society Panel. Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia
    • June 2009, Invited Talk. “Seeing (And Not Believing) Archival Sources: Photography and Film of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition’s Midway.” Photography & Visual Culture Panel. Maine Women Writers Collection 50th Anniversary Symposium (Women in the Archives), Portland, ME
    • November 2006, “Framing the Body: Imperialism, Photography, and Visual Discourse in The Collected Stories of María Cristina Mena.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia
    • July 2003    “The Cannibal at Home: Wharton’s The House of Mirth.” The Edith Wharton Society International Conference, London
  • Professional Experience and Memberships
    • Assistant Professor, Manhattan College (2008-2014)
    • Associate Professor, Manhattan College (2014-2019)
    • Professor, Manhattan College (2019-present)
    • Editorial Board Member, Shirley Jackson Studies (2022-present)

    Professional Memberships

    • The Society for the Study of American Women Writers
    • Association of Adaptation Studies
    • The Literature/Film Association
    • The Edith Wharton Society

     

  • Honors, Awards, and Grants
    • Cultivation Grant, The Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, 2023-2024
    • Winterthur Short-Term Residential Fellowship, May 2022
    • Residency, The Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, September/October 2021
    • Scholar-in-Residence, NYU, Faculty Resource Network, Fall 2021
    • Summer Research Grant, Manhattan College, 2021
    • Sabbatical Leave, 2021-2022
    • Summer Research Grant, Manhattan College, 2018
    • Sabbatical Leave, 2015-2016
    • Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship, Lilly Library, Indiana University, 2016
    • Winterthur Short-Term Residential Fellowship, 2016
    • Summer Research Grant, Manhattan College, 2015
    • Summer Research Grant, Manhattan College, 2012
    • Tournées Film Festival Grant, 2010-2011