Tiffany, a New York City native, holds a Master’s in English Literature from Mills College at Northeastern University and is currently pursuing a PhD in English Literature at Northeastern University. She is a member of the United Confederation of Taino People.
Her research focuses on the social understanding of race in British literature during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as in contemporary adaptations of canonical works and works of historical fiction set in the past. She is particularly interested in how both adapted texts and original historical fiction reinterpret earlier literary and historical materials, as well as the cultural and narrative motivations behind revisiting historical settings and figures.
Her work also examines genre formation and transformation, with attention to how literary conventions shape both classical and modern texts. Within this framework, she considers how genre mediates questions of the self, history, and interpretation, and how literary forms influence broader cultural understandings over time.
Tiffany focuses on Gothic literature because of its engagement with moral, psychological, and philosophical complexity. Her interest in Aristotelian ethics informs her analysis of how literature constructs character, virtue, and moral agency under conditions of uncertainty, secrecy, and the uncanny. This perspective informs her TEI project on Wuthering Heights, in which she encodes and analyzes descriptive and linguistic patterns surrounding Heathcliff to examine how ambiguity and moral interpretation function within the novel’s Gothic structure. Through this work, she explores how Gothic fiction cultivates ethical reflection and deepens readers’ engagement with questions of character and judgment.
She wrote and designed an illuminated manuscript book titled “Maidens in the Moorlands: Black Women in 19th-Century British Literature” that analyzes The Woman of Colour by an anonymous author and The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat. She has also presented at several conferences including, the panel on gothic literature, film, and culture at the Popular Culture Association Conference, remaking the past and the fusions of culture, time, and space panels at the Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference, and annually at the VirtualJaneCon.
She has worked as a copyeditor on the Routledge Companion to 18th-century English Literature. She is a research assistant—writing on the nineteenth century—for Mapping Black London, a digital project exploring the presence of Black people in the city. Additionally she worked as the project manager for the Early Caribbean Digital Archive.
Speaking
July 2026
VirtualJaneCon. “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: Reading the Women that Inspired Austen & the Writers Who Continue Her Legacy” Virtual.
March 2026
Charles Ignatius Sancho: a Black British Man of Letters and His World. “Understanding Suffering Through Divine Providence: A Dialogue Between Boethius and Ignatius Sancho” London, UK.
July 2025
VirtualJaneCon. “The Sublime & the Beautiful: Exploring Edmund Burke’s Aesthetic Theory in Emma (2020)” Virtual.
March 2025
Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference. “Fusions of Culture, Time, and Space” “A Gentleman of African Extraction’: Vampirism and the Haitian Revolution in Uriah Derick D’Arcy’s The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Santo Domingo (1819)“ New Orleans, LA.
July 2024
VirtualJaneCon. “Regency History is Black History”: Exploring the Historical Easter Eggs in the 2024 Adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.” Virtual.
July 2023
VirtualJaneCon. “The Timeless, Transformative, and Turbulent Romance of Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy: Exploring Austen’s Most Beloved Couple Through the Lens of Taylor Swift’s Music.” Virtual.
April 2023
Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference. “Remaking the Past”
“The Dark, Dreary, Decay Hidden in the Walls of Hacienda San Isidro: Exploring the Gothic in Isabel Cañas Novel The Hacienda in Conversation with Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.” Sacramento, CA.
July 2022
VirtualJaneCon. “A Deep Dive into Miss Lambe: Exploring the Life of the Wealth Black Heiress in Jane Austen’s Sanditon.” Virtual
April 2022
Mellon Foundation Community Collaborator Presentation at Mills College at Northeastern University. “Maidens in the Moorland: Black Women in 19th-Century British Literature.” Oakland, CA.
Popular Culture Association National Conference: Gothic Literature, Film, and Culture Panel. “The Darkness Behind the Turban: The Moor and Islamophobia in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya.” Virtual.
Awards & Grants
April 2023
Ardella Mills Prize Winner for Critical Essay (Graduate Honorable Mention) English. “The Dark, Dreary, Decay Hidden in the Walls of Hacienda San Isidro: Exploring the Gothic in Isabel Cañas novel The Hacienda in Conversation with Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.” Oakland, CA.
August 2021-May 2022
Mellon Foundation. “We Are the Voices.“ Community Collaborator. Oakland, CA.
Publications
May 2022
“Maidens in the Moorlands”. Glass Cube, Mills College at Northeastern University Museum.
Tiffany Franchesca Cruz 