Melissa Shields Jenkins

Dr. Melissa Shields Jenkins is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University, specializing in Victorian literature, gender studies, and childhood studies. She serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies and teaches courses on global Victorian literature and literary criticism.

Research focuses on:

• Victorian fatherhood representations
• Urban spaces in children's literature
• Gender and narrative form
• African American picture books

Publications analyze spatial narratives in commercial games, biofiction techniques in Oscar Wilde adaptations, and Thomas Hardy's poetic forms. Recent work examines nostalgia and heterotopia in urban representations within African American children's literature.

Authored books include Fatherhood, Authority, and British Reading Culture (Routledge, 2014) and the forthcoming Literary Texts and Critical Methods: Engaging Dialogue.