Rate My Professor drew banghart

Dr. Drew Banghart is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of English and Modern Languages at West Liberty University, where he is part of the Literature faculty in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts. He joined West Liberty University in 2018 following his position as a full-time lecturer at California Polytechnic State University. Banghart earned his PhD in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University in 2016 and previously obtained his M.A. from Northern Illinois University in 2010. A native of Illinois, his teaching responsibilities include Victorian literature, science writing, technical writing, and first-year composition.

Banghart's research specializations lie in Victorian Literature and the History of Science, focusing on the intersections of science and literature during the nineteenth century. His dissertation, "Escaping the Real: Popularizing Science and Literary Realism in the Nineteenth Century," investigates the literary strategies that Victorian realist novelists and popular science writers employed to immerse readers in imaginary worlds. Key publications encompass the book chapter "The Aesthetics of Surprise and the Challenge of Mass Readership" (2016), which analyzes George Eliot's distinctions between popular and scientific elements in Victorian novels and the role of popularizations like those by William Buckland in reshaping scientific knowledge for mass audiences; the chapter "Recovering Egypt in Marie Corelli's Ziska" in the edited volume Recovering Lost Voices: Nineteenth-Century British Literature; and the conference presentation "The Lost Transdisciplinarity of Marie Corelli's Romance" (2022). He also presented "Recovering Egypt from the Egyptologist: Marie Corelli and the Late-Victorian Resistance to Disciplinarity" at the EVENT 2024 conference. Banghart contributes to university governance as an alternate Faculty Senator for the 2024-2026 term, representing the College of Liberal and Creative Arts.