Dr. Nestor joined the SFS-Qatar faculty in August 2008 from Grinnell College in Iowa. She received her AB in Medieval Studies from Cornell University and her PhD in American Literature and Poetics from SUNY Buffalo.

She has taught a variety of courses in 19th and 20th century American literature, poetry, and poetics. Her research interests focus upon American and African American literature, poetics, and literary theory. She is currently at work on a book-length manuscript that examines the traumatic history of the Civil War through the works of Walt Whitman and W.E.B. Du Bois. Additional projects include articles on Paul Celan, Du Bois, and the poetics and ethics of trauma; Herman Melville’s Clarel; and the poetics of vision in Emily Dickinson and John Ruskin. She has published on Walt Whitman and Emanuel Levinas and given papers on Whitman, Melville, and Du Bois.