Erin M. Goss
Associate Professor
Contact
Department of English
Office: 810 Strode
Email: egoss@clemson.edu
Education
Ph.D. English, Emory University; A.B. English, Washington University in St. Louis
Courses
ENGL 4360 (Feminist Literature Criticism), ENGL 4640 (Topics:
Research Interests
18th- and 19th-century British literature, culture, and thought; gender and race; nationalism; histories of feminism
Erin M. Goss works in 18th- and 19th-century British literature and thought. With recent publications on Jane Austen and white femininity, on Frankenstein and gendered violence, and on Joanna Southcott and the feminist archive, her current research focuses primarily on writing by and about women within the interwoven histories of representations of femininity and whiteness. That research focus has led her interest in British literature and thought to become increasingly global, as there is no British thought without the wealth and profits made possible by British colonial projects in, for example, India and the West Indies. Her present book project, nearing completion, is called Complicity and the Bargains of White Femininity, 1750-1850 and examines white femininity as both a consequence of and a catalyst for colonial expansion and exploitation. The book works to acknowledge visions of white femininity generated in the 18th and 19th centuries as a continuing force in contemporary life. Additional interests include literature and the environment, literature and nationalism, histories of literary criticism, science fiction, and literature and religion.
Selected Professional Works
Books (Published)
Jane Austen and Comedy, editor. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2019.
Revealing Bodies: Anatomy, Allegory, and the Grounds of Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2012.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)
“Characterized by Violence: On Goodness and the Profits of Slavery in Persuasion.” In “Beyond the Bit of Ivory: Jane Austen and Diversity,” edited by Danielle Christmas and Susan Allen Ford. Persuasions 41.2 (2021)
“The Smiles that One Is Owed: Justice, Justine, and Sympathy for a Wretch.” In Frankenstein in Theory: A Critical Anatomy, edited by Orrin C. Wang. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021.
“At the Limits of the Recovery Project: On Not Reading Joanna Southcott.” Women’s Writing 27.2 (2020).
“Rattled Women, Shaken Toys: Wollstonecraft, Baudelaire, and the Musical Lady.” In Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms, ed. Chris Clason and Michael Demson. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2019.
“Frankenstein, Dismembered Women, and What It Takes to Be a Man.” In “Frankenstein 200: A Literary Celebration.” Litteraria Pragensia 28.56 (2018).
"Homespun Gossip: Jane West, Jane Austen, and the Task of Literary Criticism." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 56.2 (2015).
"A Training in 'feminitee': Edmund Spenser, Mary Tighe, and Reading as a Lover." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 56.3 (2014).
“Almost Unmade: Hopkins and the Body Apocalyptic.” Victorian Poetry 49.1 (2011).
“Reading Cant, Transforming the Nation: Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present.” In Victorian Transformations: Genre, Nationalism, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Literature, ed. Bianca Tredennick. Farnham, England: Ashgate Press, 2011.
“What is Called Corporeal: William Blake and the Question of the Body.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 51.4 (2010).
“Midas-Eared England: The Production of Meaning in Carlyle’s Past and Present.” Prose Studies 30.3 (2008).
