Biography

Kristine Swenson has taught at Missouri S&T since 1997. She has served as department chair of English and Technical Communication there since 2009 and as the Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society since 2019. Her research areas include Victorian literature and medicine and women’s cultural history. Swenson’s publications in those areas include Medical Women in Victorian Fiction (2005); “Mindblindness: Metaphor and Neuroaesthetics in the Works of Silas Weir Mitchell and Simon Baron-Cohen,” Literature, Neurology and Neuroscience (2013); “Scholarship in Victorian Women and Medicine: A Critical Overview,” Literature Compass (May 2013); “Phrenology as Neurodiversity: The Fowlers and Modern Brain Disorder,” Progress and Pathology (2020).

Disciplines

Victorian literature and culture

The novel

Literature and medicine/science

Education

• 2005 – Ph.D. in English, University of Iowa
• 1989 – M.A. in English, University of Virginia
• 1987 – B.A. in English, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa