Education

B.A., Princeton
M.A., Columbia
Ph.D., Columbia

Biography

My primary interest is in feminist theory and, more generally, issues of gender and sexuality whether in a theoretical context or within primary texts from Mansfield Park to Pulp Fiction.  My book on narratives of female development features chapters on Frances Burney and Jane Austen among others—and Austen is the single figure to whom I find myself returning most frequently.  I have edited the Norton Critical edition of Northanger Abbey and had something to say in print about most of Austen’s novels.   At the same time, my teaching and scholarship have shifted increasingly to consider popular and academic culture in the United States today.  Cool Men and the Second Sex (2003) is a feminist critique of such contemporary artists and intellectuals as Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Andrew Ross, and Edward Said.  As this book suggests, my current interests include recent cinema and the late twentieth-century academy.  Though I continue to focus on narrative forms, today my archive extends from novels, movies, and academic writing to reality television, decorating manuals, and women’s magazines.  I have just completed a study of marginal forms of domesticity, and a recent article engages with the area of animal studies.

Selected Publications

• Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins, Columbia UP, 2017
• Cool Men and the Second Sex, Columbia UP, 2003
• Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development, Columbia UP, 1993

Sample Courses

• Feminist Theory
• Contemporary Women's Texts