Sarah F. Gracombe

Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles and Essays

• "'Sick for Home': the Figure of Ruth in the Romantic Imagination." The Sundry Faces of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish Literature, Ed. Karen Weisman (Romantic Circles, 2020).
• “‘Precious Books’: Conversion, Nationality, and the Novel, 1810-2010,” Bastards and Believers: Converts and Conversion in Judaism from the Bible to the Present, Eds. Theodore Dunkelgrün and Pawel Maciejko (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) 
• “Du Maurier and the ‘Oriental Israelite Hebrew Jew[s]’,” George du Maurier:  Illustrator, Critic, Author, Eds. Simon Cooke and Paul Goldman (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2016) 
• “Jews and Victorian Literature,” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, Eds. Dino Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes, Aug. 2015 
• “Picturing Jewish Returns in Victorian Culture,” Philological Quarterly, Special Edition on Images of British Jews, ed. Kathryn Lavezzo, 92: 1 (Winter 2013), 67-88 
• “Imperial Englishness in Julia Frankau’s ‘Book of the Jew,’” Prooftexts, 30: 2 (Spring 2010)  
• “Beyond Deronda?: Victorian Studies and Jewish Chronicles.” Literature Compass 5 (Nov. 2008): 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00586.x 
• “Converting Trilby: Du Maurier on Englishness, Jewishness, and Culture.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 58:1 (June 2003): 75-108 

Book Reviews and On-line Publications 

• Review of Jonathan Hess, Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage. European History Quarterly 50: 4 (Fall 2020), 728-730 
• “Reflections on Ruth in Grace Aguilar’s The Women of Israel, 1887,” An Online Exhibition from the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies 2010-2011 Fellows at the University of      Pennsylvania, Fall 2011 http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/cajs/fellows11/cajs2011.html 
• Review of Meri-Jane Rochelson, A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill and Eitan Bar-Yosef and Nadia Valman, Eds.,‘The Jew’ in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture.         Victorian Periodicals Review 45: 3 (Fall 2012), 363-67 
• Review of Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. Shofar 30:1 (Fall 2011),184-7 

Selected Conference Presentations and Invited Talks 

• “Pledging Allegiance: Ruth, Immigration, and Intermarriage in America,” American Jewish Studies conference, San Diego, CA, Dec. 16th, 2019 
• “Ruth ‘amid the alien corn’: Jewish Conversion, Assimilation, and Alienation in Romantic Literature and its Adaptations,” American Jewish Studies conference, Washington DC, Dec. 17th, 2017 
• Chair and Respondent, “Communicating across Boundaries: Jewish Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century,” American Jewish Studies conference, Boston, MA, Dec. 14th, 2015 
• “Returning to the Fold: Classifying Jewishness in Victorian Fiction,” North American Victorian Studies Association conference, London, Canada, Nov. 13th, 2014 
• Invited public talk, “Novel Converts: Plotting Jewish Conversion in British Literature, 1800-2010” and invited class lecture, Program on Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University, April 2nd, 2014 
• “‘Now You Want to be a Jew’: The Finkler Question’s Conversions,” American Jewish Studies Conference, Boston, MA, Dec. 16th, 2013    
• “The Continuing Appeal of Jane Austen, 1775-2013,” Sharon Adult Center, June 18th, 2013 
• Roundtable Participant, “New Directions in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish Studies,” American Jewish Studies conference, Chicago, IL, Dec. 17th, 2012 
• “Engrafted Englishness: Rewriting Ruth in the Nineteenth Century,” North American Victorian Studies Association, Madison, WI, Sept. 30th, 2012 
• “Introducing Israel Zangwill,” Jewish Writers You Wish You Knew About Symposium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, Feb. 9th, 2012 
• “Picturing Jewish Returns in Victorian Culture,” American Jewish Studies conference, Washington D.C., Dec.19th, 2011 
• “‘Engrafted’ or ‘Alien’?: English Representations of Ruth from 1830 to 1930,” Taking Turns: New Perspectives on Jews and Conversion, The 17th Annual Gruss Colloquium in Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, May 2nd-3rd, 2011  
• “Novel Converts: Plotting Conversion in Victorian Literature,” Ruth Meltzer Seminar Series, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, March 23rd, 2011 
• “Fighting for Englishness: Anglo-Jewish Bodies and the Body Politic,” Northeast Victorian Studies Association Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, April 14th-16th, 2010 
• “Jewishness, Empire, and the ‘English Fairytale,’” Transcultural Jewishness panel, American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Harvard University  Cambridge, March 27th-29th, 2009 
• Co-Chair and Moderator, “The Art and Culture of Male Friendship” Panel, NAVSA  Conference, Yale University, New Haven, November 14-16th, 2008 
• Invited Talk, “Victorian Jews for Jesus: Englishness and the Conversion Plot,” Harvard Humanities Center, Victorian Seminar, Oct. 4th, 2007 
• “Consuming Cosmopolitanism in George Du Maurier’s Trilby,” Northeast Victorian Studies Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, March 30th, 2007 
• “Cultural Englishness: National Belonging in Trollope and Beyond.”  NAVSA (“Victorian Frontiers”), University of Toronto, Toronto, Oct. 29th, 2004 
• “‘A Discarded Garment’?: Jewishness, Englishness, and Conversion in Julia Frankau’s   Novels.” 20th-Century Jewish Women Writers Conference, Brunel University, London, July 12th, 2002 
• “‘Pitiful Vision’: Remembering and Forgetting in Dubliners.”  Millennial Joyce: The North American James Joyce Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, June 17th,1999.