Carol J. Singley (Ph.D. Brown University, M.A., B.A. Pennsylvania State University) is a Professor of English and an Associate and Fellow at the Center for Children and Childhood Studies. She directs the Undergraduate Liberal Studies Program and co-directs the American Studies Program, which includes an option for interdisciplinary studies of Walt Whitman. She serves on the board of the Walt Whitman Association, which helps to support historic preservation, education, and tourism at Whitman’s home in Camden. She formerly directed the Women’s Studies Program. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Antiquarian Association, and the Center for Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture.

Dr. Carol Singley is currently examining constructions of the child in American literature. She is co-editor of The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader (Rutgers University Press, 2003). The book includes her co-authored introduction, which describes the child as site of critical inquiry and explains how narratives of U.S. national identity are persistently configured in the language of childhood and family. Using a range of critical methodologies, contributors to the book address matters of race, gender, and family to chart the ways that representations of the child typify historical periods and conflicting ideas. Grounded in the literary, the volume also draws on other disciplines, revealing that the concepts of "the child" are not isolated artifacts but cultural productions that in turn affect the social and intellectual climates around them. Essayists look at games, pets, adolescent sexuality, adoption, and other family relations to reveal the complex ways in which the figure of the child permits writers to consider evolving ideas of nation and citizenship.

Dr. Singley is presently writing a book on representations of adoption in American literature and culture. Examining narratives from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, she argues that adoption is central to the American literary experience. She is the mother of two adopted sons, ages 12 and 14, and enthusiastically supports open adoption.

In addition to work on American childhood, Dr. Singley is an internationally known scholar of Edith Wharton and the author or editor of four books on Wharton. Her active interest in composition includes consulting on reading and writing literacy at primary and secondary schools.

Carol Singley received the Alumni Association Outstanding Faculty Award in 2002, the Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award in 1996, and was nominated twice for the Lindback Lifetime Teaching Award. Her leadership includes serving as president of the Northeast Modern Language Association and president of the Northeast Modern Language Association Women's Caucus. She co-founded and currently co-chairs the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity and Kinship, a group of interdisciplinary scholars interested in representations of adoption, personal and social identity, and family construction.

Carol Singley was awarded a Bildner Intercultural Fellowship for 2003-04 and 2004-05. Her project, “The Literature of Childhood: Multicultural Perspectives,” allowed her to redesign part of a course that is regularly offered in the Department of English and is required of all majors earning certification to teach. It also funded a collection of multicultural children’s literature, which is housed in the Robeson Library (image database can be viewed online.) The collection allows RU-C students and local residents to have easy access to a wide range of global literature for children.

Selected Publications

Books:
Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Edited Collections:
The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader. With Caroline Levander. Rutgers
University Press, 2003.

Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: A Casebook. Oxford University Press, 2003.

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton. Oxford University Press, 2003.

The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. New Riverside Editions. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era: Essays on Fiction, Drama, and Poetry. With Aliki Barnstone and Michael Tomasek Manson. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997.

Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women. With Susan Elizabeth Sweeney. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Articles and Book Chapters:

“Adoption and Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature.” Expectations and Experiences: Children, Childhood and Children’s Literature. Ed. Clare Bradford, Valerie Coghlan Kimberley Reynolds. Blackwell Publishers, forthcoming.

“Edith Wharton and Susan Minot: A Literary Lineage.” Edith Wharton Review 23.2 (Fall 2007): 8-12.

“Edith Wharton.” American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2005. Ed. David J. Nordloh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 141-48.

“Edith Wharton.” American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2004. Ed. David J. Nordloh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 127-35.

“Edith Wharton.” American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2003. Ed. David J. Nordloh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. 123-33.

“Teaching American Literature: The Centrality of Adoption.” Modern Language Studies, Volume 34.1/2 (Spring/Fall 2004): 76-83.

“Words for Children,” A Companion to American Fiction, 1780-1865. Ed. Shirley Samuels. Blackwell Publishers, 2004. 249-61.

"Race, Culture, Nation: Edith Wharton and Ernest Renan.” Twentieth Century Literature, 49.1 (Spring 2003): 32-45.

“Bourdieu, Wharton, and Changing Culture in The Age of Innocence.” Special issue on Pierre Bourdieu. Cultural Studies 17.3/4 (2003):495-519.

"Building a Family, Building a Nation: Adoption in Nineteenth Century Children's Literature." Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives. Ed. Wayne Carp. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 51-81.

“From Women’s Movement to Momentum: Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been, and Do We Need Nikes to Get There?” Journal of American Culture 25.3/4 (Fall/Winter 2002): 455-67.

“Edith Wharton, Religion, and Moral ‘Quicksand.’” Literature and Belief 15 (1995): 75-93.

“Edith Wharton’s Last Weeks and the Garden at St. Brice.” Edith Wharton Review 9 (Spring 1992): 15-16.

GRANTS

National:
National Science Foundation Education Grant (co-recipient), 1999-2002.
American Antiquarian Society Peterson Fellowship, 1997.
Dartmouth School of Criticism and Theory Fellowship, 1984.

Regional:
Northeast Modern Language Association Summer Fellowship, 1999.
New Jersey Council on the Humanities Grant, 1998.
Vermont Council on Humanities Grants, 1981 and 1980.

Rutgers University:
Center for Children and Childhood Studies Fellowship, 2000-01.
Center for Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture Fellowship, 1999-2000.
Arts and Sciences Curriculum Grant (co-recipient), 1999.
Citizenship and Service Education Grant, 1995-96.
Dialogues Curriculum Grant, 1995-96.
Dialogues Faculty Development Grant (co-recipient), 1995.
Research Council Grants, 1994-95 and 1995-96.

American University:
Faculty Research Grant, 1990.

Carol Singley’s work on adoption in literature continues with a presentation she made on “Teaching Adoption Fiction” at the Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, March 2004.

“Representations of Adoption in American Literature.” Caldwell Scholars Program. Caldwell College. Caldwell, NJ. December 2000.

“Edith Wharton on the Threshold of Catholicism: Classical and Christian Traditions in Literature and Life.” Center for Catholic Studies. College of the Holy Cross. Worcester, MA, October 2000.

“Developing Identities: Reading American Adoption.” Keynote Address. New Jersey College English Association Annual Conference. Literacy and Identity. Seton Hall University, March 2000.

“Building a Nation, Building a Family: Adoption in Nineteenth-Century Juvenile Fiction.” Literary History Lecture Series. American Antiquarian Society. Worcester, MA, October 1998.