Gregory Vargo

Associate Professor
gtv2@nyu.edu
(212) 992-7965
244 Greene, Room 709

B.A., English Literature, University of Chicago, 1995
M.F.A., Poetry Writing, Washington University in St. Louis, 1997
M.A., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2000
Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2010

Gregory Vargo’s research focuses on the literary and cultural milieu of nineteenth-century British protest movements and the interplay between politics, periodical culture, and the novel. He brings these and other interests into the classroom in courses which examine the relationship between literature, history, and politics. His essays have appeared in Victorian Studies and Victorian Literature and Culture, and he has published poetry in a variety of literary journals, including the Southern Review and the Gettysburg Review. His current book project, An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel (forthcoming, Cambridge 2017) suggests that underground newspapers affiliated with radical movements fostered an experimental literary culture which stretched the contours of well-known Victorian genres including the Bildungsroman, melodrama, and social-problem fiction.

Edited Volumes

2020

Chartist Drama

Gregory Vargo edited Chartist Drama, published by Manchester University Press.

Awards & Honors

2019

Gregory Vargo Receives Book Award

Gregory Vargo's book, An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2018), won the North American Victorian Studies Association Prize for the best book of the year in Victorian Studies.

Books

2018

An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel

Gregory Vargo's An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel was published by Cambridge University Press.

Teaching and Research Interests

the novel; literature and social history; nineteenth-century British fiction especially the gothic melodrama and the Bildungsroman; poetry; creative writing; environmentalism and literature

Recent News

AWARDS AND HONORS

The North American Victorian Studies Association awarded Gregory Vargo the 2019 Best Book of the Year in Victorian Studies Award for An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Vargo was awarded a 2017-18 NYU Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship.

CONFERENCES

Vargo was invited to a keynote session after winning the 2019 Best Book of the Year Award for An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem by North American Victorian Studies Association in Columbus, Ohio on October 17-19, 2019.

Vargo was invited to attend “‘Peace? War! peace is not, cannot, shall not be / Until Britannia’s slaves have food and freedom’: Violence and Chartist Drama” for the Northeast Victorian Studies Association in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 2020.

Vargo participated as a panelist for “When Adam delved and Eve span / Who was then the gentleman?”: Chartist drama and Robert Southey’s ‘Wat Tyler,’” at the 41st Annual Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference titled, “Radicalism and Reform,” in Rochester, New York on March 19-21, 2020

PUBLICATIONS

Gregory Vargo’s Chartist Drama was published by Manchester University Press in 2020.

Vargo's An Underground History of Early Victorian Fiction: Chartism, Radical Print Culture, and the Social Problem Novel was released from Cambridge University Press in January 2018.

Vargo published Chartist Fiction Online, a database of thirty-five radical periodicals from 1840s Britain.