Siobhan Carroll

Siobhan Maria Carroll is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where she teaches courses on 19th Century literature and science fiction. Her 2015 book An Empire of Air and Water: Uncolonizable Space in the British Imagination, 1750-1850 (University of Pennsylvania Press) was runner-up for the British Association for Romantic Studies First Book Prize in 2017. This book introduced the concept of "atopias" - blank spaces like the poles, oceans, atmosphere, and subterranean regions that exist beyond the boundaries of known places and are imagined as forever resistant to the empire's colonizing projects. Carroll’s teaching and criticism brings together Romantic literature, empire studies, and the environmental humanities. Her ongoing scholarly work illustrates how historical frameworks inform our current understandings of environmental crisis and imagined spaces.