Lara Kees
Instructor
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
225-578-2988
lkees@lsu.edu
212-Q Allen Hall
Biography
Lara Kees is an Instructor in English. Specializing in nineteenth-century British literature, Dr. Kees has focused primarily on formal analysis, considering how writers鈥� formal choices reveal what they inherit and modify from culture and education. Her doctoral research concerned the British Victorian poet Christina Rossetti and how her adaptation of Romantic poetics dramatized her preoccupation with, especially, the Oxford Movement theology of her time. Dr. Kees鈥檚 published work on Charlotte Bront毛鈥檚 _Jane Eyre_ considers how Bront毛 used abolitionist rhetoric, especially the eighteenth-century understanding of 鈥渟ympathy,鈥� to articulate Jane Eyre鈥檚 (and Bront毛鈥檚) meritocratic philosophy. Dr. Kees has taught at the college level for over twenty years, plus a three-year stint in high-school teaching. Her teaching includes composition and literature in English: British literature from the medieval period to the twentieth century; a survey of American literature; genre studies of fiction and poetry in English (not exclusively British); themed interdisciplinary courses on the medieval, modernist, and contemporary worlds (courses which included consideration of painting, film, religion, and music); and a themed freshman seminar on the idea of 鈥渢ime鈥� as it has engaged poets, philosophers, physicists, and musicians.
Area(s) of Interest
19th-century British literature, poetry and poetics, 20th century British literature