Megan Becker joined the English department in 1999, having taught previously at the University of Albany (SUNY Albany), San Diego State University, and the University of California, Irvine. She specializes in critical theory and late-Victorian literature. She is especially interested in the history of literary study at the turns of the 20th and 21st centuries, deconstructive ethical theory, and posthumanism. Recent work on Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Max Beerbohm appear in Wilde’s Other Worlds (Routledge, 2018); Reading the Nineteenth-Century Literature: Essays in Honour of J. Hillis Miller (Edinburgh UP, 2019); and Extraordinary Aesthetes: Decadents, New Women, and Fin-de-Siècle Culture (Toronto UP, 2023). Her 2005 book, Julia Kristeva and Literary Theory (Palgrave) earned her the UNLV College of Liberal Arts William Morris Award for Excellence in Research (2006). She has received the Rita Deanin Abbey Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010), the UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award (2013), and was the statewide winner of the NSHE Board of Regents’ Teaching Award (2013). Her work in late-Victorian studies – of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater in particular – have been supported by a UNLV Research Development Award (2008) and National Endowment for the Humanities (2009).

Professor Becker regularly teaches English 303: Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism, a required course for English majors, along with undergraduate and graduate courses in Victorian aestheticism, medical humanities, and contemporary critical theory. She has served in a number of roles since coming to UNLV, including chair of the English Department (2022-2025), assistant chair (2021-2022), and director of undergraduate studies (2016-7). She is currently the department’s graduate coordinator.