Julie Nash

“Hi! You must be Sarah!” Julie Nash grinned and extended her hand to me as I swung open the door to her office and gasped for breath. I smiled and nodded as I shook her hand. “How are you?” she asked.
“Good! Embarrassed. I’m so sorry I’m late! I couldn’t find parking, and then I got lost in Dracut, and then,” I paused and looked in my bag. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I left my notebook and pen in my car!”
“Oh no!” Nash exclaimed. “Here, have this.” She handed me beautiful canvas binder with “UMass Lowell Honors Program” stitched onto the front. Inside I found a notebook, a pen, and a calculator.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Just a piece of paper would be amazing. I don’t need to take this from you….”
“It’s no problem! Keep it.”
And with that, I sat down in Julie Nash’s office to conduct an interview.
“I’m very privileged to do the work that I do. To be able to work with my colleagues and teach my students, and that they pay me for it, is an amazing thing. I don’t take that for granted.” Dr. Julie Nash was living in Minnesota with her husband and two small children, finishing her dissertation, when her husband found a job at Suffolk University in Boston. After moving to Boston, Nash knew exactly what she wanted in a job but never expected to find it. She was amazed when she discovered a job opening at the University of Massachusetts Lowell that matched her criteria to the letter. Nash applied and was asked to take the position—the only catch was that she was left with less than a month to finish her dissertation. After a few weeks of hard work, Nash began her dream job at UMass Lowell.
Julie Nash works as the Acting Director of the UMass Lowell Honors Program and an Associate Professor in the UMass Lowell English Department, and has taught British literature and writing at the University since 2002. She has a B. A. in English from Oklahoma State University, and an M. A. and Ph. D. in English from the University of Connecticut. She previously has taught at the University of Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut State University, Gustavus Adolphus College, Merrimack College, and Emerson College. Dr. Nash’s scholarly interests focus on British women novelists, servants in literature, literature of the Industrial Revolution, and 18th- and 19th -century literature. She currently is researching and writing a book about the Lowell Mill girls and the Lowell Offering, the first American periodical written and published exclusively by women.
Julie Nash authored Servants and Paternalism in Works by Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell (Ashgate Publishing, 2007), and with husband Quentin Miller coauthored the literature for composition textbook Connections (Cengage). She has edited two collections of essays, New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Bronte (Ashgate Publishing, 2001, co-edited with Barbara Suess) and New Essays on Maria Edgeworth (Ashgate Publishing, 2006). She has published articles on the British authors Aphra Behn, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Fay Weldon, and she was a guest editor for a special issue on servants and literature in the journal Lit: Literature, Interpretation, Theory.
When asked to reveal her favorite part of working and teaching at UMass Lowell, Julie Nash didn’t skip a beat in answering “the students.” Her real home at the University will always be with students in the English Department, but she feels privileged now to have the chance to get to know students from all majors as the Acting Director of the Honors Program. “Students at UMass Lowell are as interesting and intelligent as students at any other public or private school, but they are completely down to earth and have no sense of entitlement.”
The students that Nash feels so passionately about clearly feel the same way about her. When asked, former students were bursting with excitement at the opportunity to recommend her. Ryan Lambert, a 2007 graduate of UMass Lowell, said “she was by far the best professor I ever had.” 2006 graduate Andre’ Gorgenyi said, “she was an outstanding, out-of-the-box professor. … She changed the way I watch TV and read books. She is genuinely a caring person. She is just awesome.” And Craig Uggerholt, a 2010 graduate and frequent writer for the UMass Lowell Connector said, “she’s the best professor I had at UML. She was such an awesome teacher and so helpful—she’s the reason I got into writing more seriously. She was also my advisor and was always super accommodating and helpful. I have nothing but good things to say about her—which is more than I can say about most people. She rules.”
Julie Nash is currently teaching Critical Methods, which is a gateway course for freshmen at the university. In her free time, Nash enjoys to travel, cook, eat, ski, and run. She lives in Medford with her husband and two sons, two cats, and a number of fish.