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Elizabeth Apple

Student
English

Overview


Elizabeth Apple is a PhD Candidate in English at Duke, where she specializes in American literature of the long nineteenth century. Her research interests include the health humanities and religion and literature. At Duke, she has taught courses in American literature, including Women, Witchcraft, and Medicine in Early American Literature and Literature & Medicine. Her writing has appeared in The New England QuarterlyNineteenth-Century Contexts, Advances in Nineteenth-Century Research, and The Bitter Southerner

She holds a BA in English & American Literatures from Middlebury College and an MDiv from Vanderbilt University.

Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations


Recent Scholarly Works


Narrative Exposures: Reading Immunity in Cotton Mather's Smallpox Writings

Journal article The New England Quarterly · June 1, 2026 AbstractWhen smallpox returned to Boston in 1721, Cotton Mather was quick to promote the African practice of inoculation. This essay returns to the Antinomian Controversy of 1636-38 to resituate Mather’s ... Full text Cite

“I hold another creed”: reading Helen Burns’ resistant theology in Jane Eyre

Journal article Nineteenth Century Contexts · January 1, 2025 Full text Cite
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