Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture (Specific interest in the Victorian); The Victorian Gothic; Identity construction, and marginalized identities (Race; Disability; Gender; LGBTQ2S+); Class Dynamics; Neo-Victorian and Neo-Victorian Gothic Literature; Contemporary Reception of the Victorian Period; Reconstructions/Disruptions of identity in Contemporary fiction (Primarily marginalized identities).
My dissertation centers on the act of Slumming; I argue that re-engaging with the Victorian, through acts of "historical slumming" in neo-Victorian media, is an inherently Gothic practice. We revive the past in the hopes we might exorcise it - even if it can never truly be laid to rest.
I look at a range of different textual forms: novels, comics, manga, video games, and film and television. How we tell stories through these forms and how the reader/viewer/player is asked to engage with the text is something I find fascinating and grapple with in my work.
Guest Lectures
1. Jekyll & Hyde: Degeneration and Slumming
ENGL 200: History of Literature in English
February 6, 2023
2. Neo-Victorian Video Games
ENGL-365: 19th Century British Literature
Queen’s University
February 3, 2023
3. "Who's Taylor Swift Anyways?": Taylor Swift's Performance of Identity
ENGL-294: Taylor Swift's Literary Legacy
November 7, 2022
Conference Presentations
1. (Re)Writing the Victorians: Neo-Victorian Fiction Performing as History.
VSAWC 2023: ReMaking the Victorians, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 2023.
2. Unsettling Colonial Narratives: Indigenous Gothic Comics.
NAVSA 2020: Unsettling Victorians (Postponed due to COVID-19) Vancouver, Canada. 2022.
Presented Virtually.
3. From the “Hapless Woman” to the “Great Reserve”: Women’s Educational Reform in Social Fiction.
Victorian Pasts, Presents, and Futures, Waukesha, United States of America. 2021. Presented Virtually.
4. The Ethics of Constructing the Historical Narrative: White’s Historian in the Digital RPG Dragon Age: 2.
University of Regina: Trash Talkin' (Cancelled due to COVID-19), Regina, Canada. 2019.
5. The Use of the Gothic in Indigenous Comics.
One Book University of Winnipeg Final Symposium, Winnipeg, Canada. 2019.
Chapters
1. "Class, Queerness, and Manga: Mediating Identity Through the Neo-Victorian Vampire in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood." ed. Simon Bacon. The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36253-8_98
2. “The Indigenous Gothic in Comics: Unsettling the Colonial Spectre.” ed. Naomi Borwein. Global Indigenous Horror. University Press of Mississippi. Forthcoming. April 2025.
Journal Articles
1. "Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Tragedy, Sacrifice and the Fallen Woman." Edited by Dr. Peter J. Miller. Crossings Vol. 4.
Online Resources
1. Co-Author. S. Brooke Cameron and Sabrina Zacharias. Introduction to the Gothic via the neo-Victorian video game, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. (2022).
2. Co-Author. S. Brooke Cameron and Sabrina Zacharias. The Big Three schools of the 19thC Gothic. (2022).
3. Co-Author. S. Brooke Cameron and Sabrina Zacharias. The Class and Gender Politics of Terror vs Horror. (2022).
4. Co-Author. S. Brooke Cameron and Sabrina Zacharias. The Term, “Gothic”. (2022).
5. Sabrina Zacharias “Sixkiller, Comics, and Indigenous Resistance.” (2022).
6. Sabrina Zacharias. "Peggy": Engaging with Indigenous Identity and Culture through Colour. (2019).
