Laura Heffernan received her doctorate in 2007 from the University of Pennsylvania with a specialization in modernist literature. Her dissertation examined the practice of literary criticism in British modernism from 1909 to 1929. She has written on Rebecca West’s aesthetic theory (forthcoming, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and is the author of a reader’s guide to Ulysses (Sparkpublishing, 2002). She has taught courses at Penn on twentieth-century British literature, modernist literature, literary theory, theories of gender and sexuality, British cultural studies, and contemporary British film. In 2007, she received a Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Graduate Student from the School of Arts and Sciences.