Rate My Professor Megan Becker

Megan L. Becker (Becker-Leckrone), Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), specializes in literary theory and Victorian fiction and nonfiction. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude in English from Bryn Mawr College in 1990 and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Irvine, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. Becker joined UNLV in 1999 as Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 2005 and full Professor in 2020. Prior appointments include Visiting Assistant Professor at the University at Albany (SUNY) in 1998–1999, Lecturer at San Diego State University in 1997–1998, and Lecturer/Instructor at UCI from 1990–1998. Her research centers on late-Victorian studies, particularly Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater, and extends to medical humanities, including narratology, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, affect theory, and the materiality of migraine.

Becker's key publication is the book Julia Kristeva and Literary Theory (Palgrave, 2005), which garnered the UNLV College of Liberal Arts’ William Morris Award for Excellence in Research (2006). She has authored essays in New Literary History, Modern Language Notes, Victoriographies, and chapters in volumes such as Extraordinary Aesthetes (University of Toronto Press, 2023), Reading Victorian Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), and Wilde’s Other Worlds (Routledge, 2018). Her scholarship received support from a UNLV Research Development Award (2008) and National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Grant (2009). Becker has earned prestigious teaching honors, including the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents’ Teaching Award (2013, statewide winner), UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award (2013), and Rita Deanin Abbey Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010). She edited The Pater Newsletter (2006–2010), served as North American Book Review Editor for Victoriographies (2011–2015), and has been the English Department Liaison and Advisory Board Member to the Black Mountain Institute since 2006. Becker teaches courses including Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism, literary nonfiction, narratology, aesthetics, and Victorian studies.