Chair of the Department of English; Director, Literary Studies Program

Virginia Zimmerman is Professor of English at Bucknell University. She specializes in Victorian literature and culture and in children's literature from the 19th century to the present.

Professor Zimmerman's scholarly works address the intersection of material culture and time, whether in poems about archaeology or in children's books. Dr. Zimmerman's essays have appeared in Children's Literature, Configurations, the Journal of Literature & Science, Victorian Periodicals Review, Victorians Institute Journal, Pedagogy, and The Lion and the Unicorn, as well as recent collections published by MLA, Routledge, and Manchester UP. Her book Excavating Victorians was published by SUNY press in 2008.

Professor Zimmerman also writes children's fiction. La Finestra del Temps (Cruïlla 2012) was translated into Catalan and published in Barcelona. The Rosemary Spell was published in 2015 by Clarion Books, and PINK! A Women’s March Story is forthcoming in January 2022 from Running Press.

Educational Background

• Ph.D., Virginia

Teaching Interests

• Victorian literature and culture
• Young adult fiction and children's literature
• The nineteenth-century novel
• Nineteenth-century women's literature
• Children and immigration

Scholarly Interests

• Victorian literature
• Children's literature
• Science and literature
• Serial publication

Current Projects and Research Interests

Child-authored serials and non-linear experiences of time

Recent Awards

• Bucknellian Faculty of the Year 2021
• NEH Chair in the Humanities 2013-16
• Scadden Fellowship 2010
• Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence 2009

Selected Publications

PINK! A Women’s March Story (Running Press Kids 2022).

“Texts in Time: Periodical and Serial Publishing for Children.” The Cambridge History of Children's Literature in English, Volume 2: 1830-1914. (ed. by Eugene Giddens and Zoe Jaques) Cambridge UP: forthcoming 2022.

"The YA Critical Edition Project," Teaching Young Adult Literature. (ed. by Karen Coats, Mike Cadden, and Roberta Seelinger Trites). MLA: 2020.

"Bringing Egypt Home: Children's Encounters with Egypt in the Long Nineteenth Century." Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750- 1914 (ed. by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling) Manchester UP: 2020.

"Excavating Children – Archaeological Imagination and Time Slip in the Early 1900's." Excavating Modernity, Physical, Temporal and Psychological Stratification in Literature, 1900-1930 (ed. by Eleanor Dobson and Gemma King). Routledge: 2019.

The Rosemary Spell. A novel for young readers. New York: Clarion Books, 2015.

"The Curating Child: Runaways and Museums in Children's Fiction." The Lion and the Unicorn (2015).

La Finestra del Temps. A novel for young readers. Barcelona: Cruïlla, 2012. (translated into Catalan).

"Natural History on Blocks, in Bodies, and on the Hearth: Juvenile Science Literature and Games, 1850-1875."Configurations 19 (2011) 407-30.

"'The Weird Message of the Past': Material Epistemologies of Past, Present, and Future in the Nineteenth Century." Victorian Periodicals Review. 42.2 (2009) 114-135.

"Harry Potter and the Gift of Time" Children's Literature 37 (2009). 194-215.

Excavating Victorians. SUNY Press, 2008.

"Moving Poems: Kinesthetic learning in the Literature Classroom." Pedagogy, 2002.