Meet Patrick Fleming, author of Animating the Victorians: Disney's Literary History on Monday, June 22nd at 6:30pm!
About Patrick from Patrick’s website:
I’m a former English professor and I originally created this website to share my academic experience and my scholarship (both in print and in process). I haven’t updated the blog since 2020, but I recently published two books: British Children’s Literature of the 19th Century: A Companion and Animating the Victorians: Disney’s Literary History.
In May 2020 I earned tenure at Fisk University, but instead of accepting the promotion I moved to the DC area to work at the National Endowment for the Humanities. I advanced the agency’s educational grantmaking, supporting projects that developed humanities curricula at colleges and universities and provided professional development opportunities for K-12 educators and higher education faculty. In June 2025, NEH staff was reduced by about 70%; mine was among the roles eliminated. In August I was privileged to join the University of Maryland’s Professional Writing Program, as lecturer.
Animating the Victorians (published spring 2025, with an audiobook in 2026) had its origins in a 2014 NEH summer seminar, so that book feels like it came full circle. It developed from a seminar, “Disney’s Victorians,” which I developed at Rollins College. The book draws on materials in the Walt Disney Company Archives and examines how the Walt Disney Company mediates our modern understanding of Victorian literature and culture.
British Children’s Literature of the 19th Century (also published spring 2025) is part of McFarland’s series of companions to 19th century literature series. It includes an introductory essay and individual entries covering about 100 authors, texts, and topics of relevance to teachers and scholars of Romanticism, Victorian studies, and children’s literature. You can see my other publications on my CV.
Before joining the NEH I was an assistant professor of English at Fisk University in Nashville, TN, where I also directed the W. E. B. Du Bois General University Honors Program. At Fisk I taught courses in British literature, including surveys for majors and seminars on nineteenth-century literature, children’s literature, and the history of the novel. I also substantially revised the honors program, making it more open to students from all majors and encouraging applications to national and international fellowships and scholarships. When I started, the honors program had one graduating senior and students rarely applied for national awards. When I left, the honors program was an integral part of both recruitment and of the student experience. In my last two years at Fisk, honors students won a Goldwater, a Luard Morse, and a Fulbright (each a first for the university), among other smaller awards and several finalists for the Rhodes Scholarship.
Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my wife Kate and our two sons, Penn and Asa. When I’m not at a kids’ birthday party or track meet or play date or gymnastics practice or what-have-you, I enjoy ultimate frisbee, frisbee golf, taking walks, and riding my bike. Recently I repurposed some wood from an old porch into raised garden beds, and I’m trying my hand at growing some vegetables.
I received my B.A. from Pomona College and my M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. In a past life I was an amateur ballroom dancer: some of my performances are still on YouTube (here and here), and I was featured in the short film Ballroom Boys, part of the Virginia Film Festival’s Adrenaline Film Project. Kate and I met through ballroom dancing, and though we don’t go out dancing as much as we used to, we still enjoy it when we get the chance.
Animating the Victorians: Disney's Literary History
A thorough study of the many links between the Golden Age of children's literature and a global storytelling powerhouse
Many Disney films adapt works from the Victorian period, which is often called the Golden Age of children’s literature. Animating the Victorians: Disney’s Literary History explores Disney’s adaptations of Victorian texts like Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, and the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Author Patrick C. Fleming traces those adaptations from initial concept to theatrical release and beyond to the sequels, consumer products, and theme park attractions that make up a Disney franchise. During the p
roduction process, which often extended over decades, Disney’s writers engaged not just with the texts themselves but with the contexts in which they were written, their authors’ biographies, and intervening adaptations. To reveal that process, Fleming draws on preproduction reports, press releases, and unfinished drafts, including materials in the Walt Disney Company Archives, some of which have not yet been discussed in print.
But the relationship between Disney and the Victorians goes beyond adaptations. Walt Disney himself had a similar career to the Victorian author-entrepreneur Charles Dickens. Linking the Disney Princess franchise to Victorian ideologies shows how gender and sexuality are constantly being renegotiated. Disney’s animated musicals, theme parks, copyright practices, and even marketing campaigns depend on cultural assumptions, legal frameworks, and media technologies that emerged in nineteenth-century England. Moreover, Disney’s adaptations influence modern students and scholars of the Victorian period. By applying scholarship in Victorian studies to a global company, Fleming shows how institutions mediate our understanding of the past and demonstrates the continued relevance of literary studies in a corporate media age.