Cassandra Nelson
365 E. Campus Mall, Suite 200 | Madison, WI 53715
cnelson@slbrownfoundation.org
cmn3zh@virginia.edu
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS AND EMPLOYMENT
2025– Lumen Center, Affiliate Fellow in Literature
2024–2025 Lumen Center, Visiting Fellow in Literature
2019– University of Virginia, Associate Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
2018–2019 University of Virginia, Bradley Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
2015–2018 United States Military Academy, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
EDUCATION
2009–2014 Harvard University, Ph.D., English
2006–2007 Boston University, M.A., Editorial Studies
2001–2005 Boston University, B.A., English, summa cum laude
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Writing and Composition; Christianity and Literature; Public Theology; Book History, Media Studies, and Technology; American Literature; The Novel
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
2023 “Who’s Afraid of the Still, Small Voice?” named an editor’s pick (and top 5th most read story of the year) by Common Good
2018 Bradley Fellowship, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
2016, 2018 Workshop Participant, “Writing Beyond the Academy,” Collegeville Institute
2015 Lilly Fellowship, Valparaiso University (declined)
2014 Summer Scholar, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor,” Georgia College and State University
2012 Meringoff Nonfiction Award, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
2011 William Harris Arnold and Gertrude Weld Arnold Essay Prize, Harvard University
2005 Student Speaker Prize, Boston University
2001 Trustee Scholarship, Boston University
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2025 A Theology of Fiction. Memononee Falls, WI: Wiseblood Books, 2025.
2025 Age of Miracles: Technology and Transcendence in American Fiction.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2024 “Forming Souls Receptive to the Counsels of Reason and Value: A Teleological Approach to Christian Prose Poetics.” Among Winter Cranes 7.4 (Autumn 2024), October 24, 2024.
2014 “Manichaeism and the Movies: Flannery O’Connor and the Roman Catholic Response to Film and Television at Midcentury.” Literary Imagination 16.1 (February 2014): 76–94.
2010 “Two Allusions in the Provisional Title of Samuel Beckett’s More Pricks than Kicks.” Notes and Queries 57.2 (2010): 239–240.
Essays and Book Chapters
2025 “That None Should Fall: Hierarchy’s Place in the Story of Salvation.” Comment 43:4 (Winter 2025): 57–64.
2025 “Gratitude and Grace.” In Our Sense of Gratitude: For Christopher Ricks, edited by Michael Autrey, pp. 112–117. Boston: Senex Press, 2025.
2025 “Race Isn’t Black and White: Another Way to Think About Race and Diversity.” Common Good 19 (Spring 2025): 64–73.
2024 “Strengthen What Remains: The Ripple Effects of Higher Ed’s Obsession with Metrics.” Minding the Campus, November 29, 2024.
2023 “Who’s Afraid of the Still, Small Voice? The Case for Faithful Presence in Education.” Common Good 13 (Autumn 2023), 32–40.
2022 “Authority is Dead, Long Live Authority.” Comment (Cardus), July 21, 2022.
2022 “Readiness is Not All.” (In response to the question, What is the military for?) The Point 27 (Spring 2022): 79–89.
2022 “A Theology of Fiction.” First Things (April 2022): 43–50.
2021 “Hard Liberty: The Hellish Internet’s False Promise.” Plough Quarterly, March 25, 2021.
2018 “Time is on Our Side: Reflections on Advent.” Commonweal, December 14, 2018: 38–39.
2018 “Bracing for Impact: Trauma, Triggers, and the Saving Power of Literature.” Commonweal, February 9, 2018: 11–17.
2017 “‘Why, oh Why, the Doily?’: Aristotle, Elizabeth Bishop, and the Work of Preservation.” Commonweal, October 26, 2017: 44-45.
2017 “How We Built This: David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King and the Collective Distraction from the Reality of Our Own Existence.” Malibu Magazine (October 2017): 62-65.
2016 “Seeing is Believing: What Flannery O’Connor Meant by Vision.” Commonweal, November 11, 2016: 14–17.
2016 “Second Sight: Reading Flannery O’Connor and Betty Wahl at Collegeville.” Bearings Online (2016).
2014 “‘A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever’: Thoughts on the Crisis in the Humanities.” The Battersea Review (2014).
2013 “Through a Glass, Darkly: Notes on Screens.” The Battersea Review 1.3 (2013).
2012 “The Woman Who Was Mistaken for Flannery O’Connor.” Deep South Magazine, November 2, 2012.
2008 “‘What with the Moving and the Children’: Betty Wahl in Ireland and America, 1951–1958.” The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society 20.2–21.1 (Spring and Fall 2008), 133–159.
Reviews and Review-Essays
2025 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 77.3 (September 2025): 226–228.
2024 Startling Figures: Encounters with American Catholic Fiction, by Michael O’Connell. American Catholic Studies 135.4 (Winter 2024): 92–94.
2023 In Praise of Hidden Things: Life of the Virgin Mary, by John Geometres. Current, December 20, 2023.
2023 Tradition and the Individual Christian Talent: The Situation of the Catholic Novelist, by Trevor Cribben Merrill, and Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto by Joshua Hren. The Hedgehog Review 25.3 (Fall 2023), 142–147.
2023 The Metaphysics of Birth: What We Are Born For, and Why: Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, by Jennifer Banks. Comment, August 24, 2023.
2021 When the TV Turns Off: The Silence, by Don DeLillo. First Things (August/September 2021): 49–53.
2021 A Good Editor is Hard to Find: Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, edited by Benjamin B. Alexander. First Things (February 2021): 57–60.
2018 Despair Not, Presume Not: The Kingdom, by Emmanuel Carrère. First Things (December 2018): 47–49.
2017 Losing His Way: The Schooldays of Jesus, by J. M. Coetzee. Commonweal, July 7, 2017: 33–34.
2016 Quotidian Wonder: Zero K, by Don DeLillo. First Things 266 (October 2016): 59–62.
2016 Thrown into the World: Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. First Things 261 (March 2016): 60–61.
2015 Lights in the Firmament (Christmas Critics). Commonweal, December 4, 2015: 38–40.
2015 Honor Thy Child: Lila, by Marilynne Robinson. First Things 250 (February 2015): 53–55.
2015 Inefficiency Expert: Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942–1963, edited by Katherine A. Powers. Essays in Criticism 65.1 (January 2015): 115–123.
2014 Flawed Vessels: The Liar’s Wife: Four Novellas, by Mary Gordon. Commonweal, November 18, 2014: 24–26.
2014 Pears Not Pixels: Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon. First Things 240 (February 2014): 57–58.
2012 “Ignorance Regained”: The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 2: 1941–1956, edited by George Craig, et al. Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 2012), 21–22.
2011 Beckett and Death, edited by Steven Barfield, Matthew Feldman, and Philip Tew. James Joyce Literary Supplement 25.1 (Spring 2011), 6–7.
2011 “A Journey From, and Not To”: The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 1: 1929–1940, edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, et al. Essays in Criticism 61.1 (April 2011): 96–104.
Editions
2016 Advisor on the text. More Pricks than Kicks. By Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press.
2010 More Pricks than Kicks. By Samuel Beckett. Edited and with a preface and chronology (uniform to the series) by Cassandra Nelson. London: Faber and Faber, 2010.
2009 “The Other House.” By Betty Wahl. In The Southern Review 45.4 (Autumn 2009): 742–757.
2009 “Aprille.” By Betty Wahl. In The Antioch Review 67.3 (Summer 2009): 480–487.
2008 “The Lace Curtain,” “Tide Rips in the Tea Cups,” and “A Shorter History of the Irish People.” By Betty Wahl. In The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society 20.2–21.1 (Spring and Fall 2008), 103–132.
Encyclopedia Articles
2011 “Ambition, Guilt, and Fate in Macbeth.” In Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. Edited by Jennifer McClinton-Temple. New York: Facts on File (2011), 3.942–945.
2011 “Race, Religion, and Isolation in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. Edited by Jennifer McClinton-Temple. New York: Facts on File (2011), 3.1082–1085.
2008 “J. F. Powers.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 19 September 2008.
2008 “Betty Wahl.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 27 June 2008.
INVITED TALKS
2025 “Words and the Word.” Madison Catholic Faculty Group. Holy Name Heights, Madison, WI, February 20, 2025.
2025 “Can Good Fiction Deliver What Technology Can’t?” Upper House, Madison, WI, February 14, 2025.
2025 “Institutions and Auctoritas.” Response to Anne Snyder, “Reimagining Our Moment for Whatever Comes Next.” Lumen Center, Madison, WI, January 31, 2025.
2024 “Homo Fabulator: Storytelling Man and A Theology of Fiction.” St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, Madison, WI, December 6, 2024.
2024 “A Theology of Fiction: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Lumen Center, Madison, WI, April 8, 2024.
2023 “From the Golden Mean to ‘Median Humans’: Technology and the Sinking Middle.” Front Porch Republic 2023 Conference. Madison, WI, October 21, 2023.
2021 “‘Hard Liberty’: Milton’s Hell and the Internet Age.” Guest lecture and discussion with students in Literature XI. The Brearley School (remotely), May 20, 2021.
2019 “Narratives of Politicization and the Civic Imagination.” Response to “Politicization, Depolitcization, and Grammars of Commonality: Addressing Plurality in Politics,” by Eeva Luhtakallio and Veikko Eranti (Tempere University, Finland). Power, Agency, and Authority Seminar, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, March 12–15, 2019.
2015 “‘That Miracles May Yet Be Possible’: Faith and Technology in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon.” Appalachian State University, February 2, 2015.
2014 “‘The Order that Appeared, Finally, in the Retelling of Events’: Betty Wahl and Suitable Accommodations.” Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, Boston University, February 12, 2014.
2010 “‘Corrigées si on peut dire’ [‘Corrected, if you can call it that’]: Textual Variants in Samuel Beckett’s More Pricks than Kicks.” Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, Boston University, September 29, 2010.
CONFERENCE PANELS ORGANIZED
2019 “What Do We Mean by ‘Close Reading’?” Seminar, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers 23rd Annual Conference, College of the Holy Cross, October 3–6, 2019.
CONFERENCE PAPERS
2017 “Sense and Comprehensibility: Revivifying Literature for First-Year College Students.” Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers 21st Annual Conference, University of Dallas, October 26–29, 2017.
2017 “Faith, Authority, and Computer Culture.” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association’s 38th Annual Conference, Albuquerque, February 18, 2017.
2016 “From Totality to Silent Reading to Simultaneity: Meaning and Identity in a Digital Age.” States of the Book Symposium, United States Military Academy, September 24, 2016.
2016 “O’Connor and Objects: Eyeglasses.” The Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference, Boston University, March 10, 2016.
2016 “‘Possessed of a Selfness, a Teeming Soul’: Terrorism, Technology, and Transcendence in Don DeLillo’s Mao II.” Department of English and Philosophy, Faculty Colloquium, United States Military Academy, February 2, 2016.
2015 “The Human Eye and the Camera Eye: Flannery O’Connor’s Ethics and Aesthetics of Seeing.” South Central Modern Language Association 72nd Annual Conference, Vanderbilt University, November 2, 2015.
2014 “‘Karmic Echoes’: Place and the Past in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.” American Comparative Literature Association 2014 Annual Meeting, New York University, March 20–23, 2014.
2013 “Meaning Fixed and Free: Pages, Screens, and the Role of the Reader.” Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers 19th Annual Conference, University of Georgia, April 5, 2013.
2012 “Manichaeism and the Movies in the Writings of Flannery O’Connor.” ALA 23rd Annual Conference on American Literature, Flannery O’Connor Society panel, San Francisco, Calif., May 26, 2012.
2011 “Boundless Curiosity, from A to Z: Hester Thrale Piozzi’s New Common Place Book.” 19th Annual British Women Writers Conference, Ohio State University, March 31, 2011.
COURSES TAUGHT
The Lumen Center
Picturing the Good through Recent American Fiction (Spring 2025)
- Four-week, non-credit reading group designed to deepen participants’ faith formation through the study of American literature.
- Course topics: birth, death, and what makes for the good life (eudaimonia) in between. Authors: Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, George Saunders, Tess Slesinger, David Foster Wallace, Tobias Wolfe.
United States Military Academy, Department of English and Philosophy
Introduction to Composition: Organized course-wide guest lecture by Christopher Ricks (2015) and performance of contemporary American monologues by Adam Driver’s nonprofit Arts in the Armed Forces (2016) for more than 1,300 first-year cadets.
Introduction to Literature
The Novel
Drama
Harvard University, Department of English
Postwar American and British Fiction, with James Wood
Castaways and Renegades (American literature survey), with John Stauffer
Harvard University, Program in General Education
American Protest Literature, with John Stauffer and Timothy McCarthy (Fall 2011)
SERVICE AND RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Harvard Christian Alumni Society
Member, Speakers Committee, September 2023–present
Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology
Member, Tech Hub Working Group, April 2023–present
Rivendell Institute, Yale University
Emerging Scholar, Christian Poetics Initiative, February 2022–present
United States Military Academy
Instructor, Summer Leaders Experience, June 3–16, 2017
Designed and taught a 5-hour workshop on college-level literary analysis to 216 rising high school seniors enrolled in the West Point Summer Leaders Experience.
Officer in Charge, July 3–23, 2016
Led five cadets on a three-week service trip to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Oversaw travel arrangements, country and medical clearance requirements, and other pre-trip logistics. Volunteered at School #13, teaching English to 14- to 18-year-olds, and Kindergarten #166, helping institute a Montessori program for children ages 2 to 7.
Oxford University Press
Associate Editor, August 2014–June 2015
Worked with editors-in-chief and editorial boards to commission and publish articles in humanities fields; oversaw peer review, pre-production, and post-production processes; helped establish style guide for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia series.
Baylor University, Baylor University Press
Freelance proofreader, 2008–2014
Ensured that scholarly titles in the humanities and social sciences were free from typographical and other errors, and met Baylor style guidelines; organized notes and bibliographic citations.
Boston University, Office of the Provost
Assistant to the Provost, 2007–2009
Edited four issues of the award-winning annual online and print publication Research at Boston University. Drafted a mission statement for Boston University (approved by the President and Board of Trustees) and a 100-page self-study report as part of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges re-accreditation process. Prepared correspondence and remarks for the Provost and other senior administrators.
Boston University, School of Education
Assistant to the Dean/Associate Provost for Outreach and Special Initiatives, 2005–2007
Drafted and edited annual reports, speeches, memos, and appeal letters for the dean; provided administrative and logistical support for Step UP, a collaboration among five private universities, the City of Boston, and the Boston Public Schools.
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Reading Partners
Reading Tutor, Sept. 2014–June 2015
Met weekly with two first-grade students at P.S. 188 to help develop their mastery of the alphabet and phonics, and foster a love of reading.
826 Boston
Writing Tutor, Sept.–Dec. 2013
Provided guidance on thesis development and essay revision to students at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math & Science (grades 7–12). Worked with high school seniors to generate essay ideas, develop outlines, and revise drafts of Common Application essays.
REFERENCES
Louis Menand, Harvard University
Christopher Ricks, Boston University
John Stauffer, Harvard University
James Wood, Harvard University
Cassandra Nelson 