Erin Johns Speese
I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duquesne University, and I received my Ph.D. in Literature, specializing in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature, from West Virginia University. I explore the ways British and American Modernist writers, twenty-first-century public intellectuals, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientists courted visibility within their disciplines while also subverting them. Please visit my website at https://erinkjohnsspeese.com.
Subjects: Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Literature
Biography
I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duquesne University, and I received my Ph.D. in Literature, specializing in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature, from West Virginia University.Education
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Ph.D. in Literature, West Virginia University
M.A. in Literature, West Virginia University
B.A. in English, University of Pittsburgh
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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As a researcher, I’m interested in thinking about the ways British and American Modernist writers, twenty-first-century public intellectuals, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientists simultaneously courted visibility within their disciplines while subverting them at the same time. To that end, Gender and the Intersubjective Sublime in Faulkner, Forster, Lawrence, and Woolf examines the ways that modernist novelists situated themselves in the literary tradition of the sublime while also rewriting its basic tenets, promoting emotion over reason as a way to challenge patriarchal thinking. In my second project, Writing the Body Invisible: Female Public Intellectuals and the Navigations of the Corporeal Body, I explore the way female public intellectuals, especially women of color, must court visibility through their physical, corporeal bodies, highlighting the ways women’s bodies are always linked to their intellectual achievements. Public intellectuals like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Roxanne Gay become visible by using the body as a rhetorical tool that makes their intellectual work visible to society. Chemical Feminism: Women’s Rhetoric in Scientific Writing, a future project, I examine the way female scientists, especially chemists, used scientific discourse through both public academic writing and textbook as a way to subtly interject feminist ideals and principles. Often, their scientific pedagogies and theories reflected their gendered experiences found in their autobiographical works.
Websites
Books
Articles
“Aren’t We Guilty Too?: The Censorship of D.H. Lawrence in the Ivory Tower"
Published: Jan 01, 2014 by Rhizomes
Authors: Erin K. Johns Speese
Subjects:
Literature, Law, Gender & Intersectionality Studies
This article examines the history of censorship regarding D.H. Lawrence, especially in terms of the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. In particular, the article draws on the censorship trial and Kate Millett's critiques of Lawrence to rethink the ways censorship is enacted in the academy.
“‘Our feelings become impressed with the grandeur of Omnipotence’..."
Published: Jan 01, 2013 by Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism
Authors: Erin K. Johns Speese
Subjects:
Literature
“‘Our feelings become impressed with the grandeur of Omnipotence’: Mary Somerville’s Feminine Scientific Sublime" examines the ways Mary Somerville employed the sublime in her scientific writing, revealing the complex relationship between literature and science during the nineteenth century.
“Raping Prejudice: Mary Hays’s The Victim of Prejudice, Gender, and Rape”
Published: Jan 01, 2011 by Work of Romanticism: Proceedings from the 2008 International Conference on Romanticism
Authors: Erin K. Johns Speese
Subjects:
Literature, Gender & Intersectionality Studies
This article examines the way gender and rape are presented in Mary Hays's The Victim of Prejudice, particularly the ways emotional and mental violation parallel physical violation in the novel.
“A Flip of the Coin: Gender Systems & Female Resistance in the Coen Brothers..."
Published: Jan 01, 2009 by No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film
Authors: Erin K. Johns Speese
Subjects:
Literature, Film and Video, Gender & Intersectionality Studies
“A Flip of the Coin: Gender Systems and Female Resistance in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men" examines the way gender, especially female resistance, appears in the movie, No Country for Old Men.
“Welcome to Stars Hollow: Gilmore Girls, Utopia, and the Hyperreal"
Published: Jan 01, 2008 by Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity: Essays on Family and Feminism in the Television Series
Authors: Erin K. Johns and Kristin Smith
This article analyzes the way the hyperreal appears in Gilmore Girls' configuration of utopia in the pilot episode.