Dr. Karen Waters is Professor of English at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, where she regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in 19th century literature, women writers, contemporary literary theory, gender studies and composition.  She is the author of The Perfect Gentleman: Masculine Control in Men’s Fiction, 1860-1901, a book-length study of the concept of masculinity in Victorian literature, as well as articles on Victorian literature and culture and on women writers. 

Dr. Waters currently directs Marymount’s Freshman Writing Program; she also created and teaches in the Gender and Society program, and she developed and coordinates Marymount’s student research conference, an annual showcase of undergraduate and graduate student research across the university.  

Active in professional associations, Dr. Waters is currently on the Senior Advisory Board of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association.  She was awarded a Fulbright Grant in 2006 to teach literature to graduate English students in New Delhi, India, a transformative experience, both personally and professionally.