Dr. Emily Tucker has taught a wide range of courses at Hope College, from one on Broadway plays and musicals to a course on Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen. She also teaches an Expository Writing course that centers on reading and writing about empathy.

Dr. Tucker is especially interested in how novelists and playwrights try to teach their readers about emotions. In her research, she focuses on nineteenth-century writers like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde, as well as on contemporary theatrical works that reimagine nineteenth-century texts for new audiences. 

She has been teaching at Hope since 2019.

Areas of Expertise

• Victorian and neo-Victorian literature
• Dramatic literature

Education

• Ph.D., English, University of Connecticut, 2018
• M.A., English, University of Connecticut, 2013
• B.A., English, Vassar College, 2009

Selected Publications and Presentations

• “‘An Agony…That Sometimes Overcomes Me’: Theater versus Opium in The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” presentation at Collins and Dickens Conference, 2024
• “Melodramatic Critique in Hard Times,” presentation at Nineteenth-Century Studies Association conference (online), 2021
• “Wilde’s Salome and Fin de SiecleMelodrama,” Victorians Institute Journal, 2018
• “Recovering Melodrama in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband,” presentation at Victorians Institute conference, 2017
• “Retelling History: Hamilton and the Literary-Historical Tradition,” presentation at Northeast Modern Language Association conference, 2016

Outside the College

Dr. Tucker enjoys singing, running, and over-analyzing television. She is generally a terrible cook but can make excellent spaghetti.