AMANDA LOUISE JOHNSON
1901 Binz Street
Apartment 7
Houston, TX 77004
(615) 636-4729
[email protected]
EDUCATION
PhD, English literature, Vanderbilt University, 2014
MA, English literature, Vanderbilt University, 2009
MA, Global Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, 2008
BA, English literature, University of Chicago, 2006
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Rice University – Lecturer in English, 2015 –
Vanderbilt University – Lecturer in English, 2014 – 2015
BOOK MANUSCRIPT
Book Title: New World Romance
Dissertation Title: “Romances of the New World”
ARTICLE PUBLICATIONS
“Paul Muldoon’s Madoc,” in preparation
“Defoe, The Isle of Pines, and Bastard Utopias” under preparation for Digital Defoe 8.1 (2017)
“Thomas Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxon Genesis: A Romance,” forthcoming, Modern Philology 114.3 (2017)
“Thomas Jefferson’s Ossianic Romance,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 45 (2016):19-35
“William Hazlitt, Liber Amoris, & the Imagination” European Romantic Review 25.6 (2014):743-56
“Absalom, Absalom!,” forthcoming, The Geography of Literature (ABC-CLIO; ed. Lynn M. Houston)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
“Phillis Wheatley,” forthcoming in Gale Cengage Learning Early American Textbook
“Samson Occam,” forthcoming in Gale Cengage Learning Early American Textbook
“Some Current Publications,” annotated bibliography in print in Restoration 38.2 (2014)
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CONFERENCES AND INVITED TALKS
“Hemispheric America & Paul Muldoon’s Madoc,” Louisville Conference; February 19, 2016
“Anti-Colonial Christianity in Robert Southey’s Madoc,” SCMLA, Nashville, TN; October 15, 2015
“Defoe, The Isle of Pines, and Bastard Utopias,” ASECS, Los Angeles, CA; March 20, 2015
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“Poe and the Romance Genre,” 4 International Poe Conference, NYC; February 27, 2015
“Thomas Jefferson and James Macpherson,” ASECS, Williamsburg, VA; March 21, 2014
“Reform, Reformation, and Re-formation in Defoe,” SEASECS, Knoxville TN; February 27, 2014
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“Thomas Jefferson’s Saxon Genesis,” SEA 8 Biennial Meeting, Savannah, GA; March 2, 2013
“Thomas Jefferson’s Racial Romance,” invited talk at the University of Virginia; July 11, 2012
“The Eighteenth-Century South in Faulkner,” ASECS, San Antonio, TX; March 22, 2012
“Teresia Constantia Phillips’ Memoir and Fictionality,” SCSECS, Asheville, NC; February 25, 2012
“Transatlantic Studies,” seminar position paper, NAVSA, Nashville, TN; November 5, 2011
“Daniel Defoe and Racial Englishness,” Bloodwork Conference, University of Maryland, College
Park, MD; May 6, 2011
“Transatlantic Whiteness in Poe’s Southern Gothic,” NEASECS, Buffalo, NY; October 23, 2010
“Hazlitt's Imagination and the State,” First-Year PhD Student Symposium, Vanderbilt, April 3, 2009
“Georg Forster, Colonialism, & the South Pacific,” Postgraduate Forum, York, UK; May 13, 2008
TEACHING – designed syllabi, bore full instructor responsibility for all courses at Vanderbilt, Rice:
Lecturer in English, Rice University – 2015 –
ENGL366 – Gothic America – fall 2016; texts and authors include: Edgar Allan Poe, “The
Imp of the Perverse,” “How to Write a Blackwood’s Article,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,”
“Berenice,” “Ligeia,” “Fall of the House of Usher,”; Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly;
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, Essays on Sexuality; Nathaniel
Hawthorne, “Earth’s Holocaust,” The Marble Faun; Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror; Mario
Praz, The Romantic Agony; Matthew Lewis, Journal of a West-Indian Proprietor; Northrop Frye,
Anatomy of Criticism; Edmund Burke, Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful; Athanasian
Creed, John Calvin, Institutes of Christianity
ENGL 360 – American Literature to 1860 – spring 2016, fall 2016; projected texts include:
Behn, The Widdow Ranter; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Cabeza de Vaca, La Relación; Smith,
Generall Historie of Virginia; Defoe, Colonel Jacque; Phillis Wheatley; Samson Occam; Jupiter
Hammon; Poe, “Hop Frog,” “Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia”; Bradstreet; Cooke, SotWeed Factor; Alsop, The Character of Maryland; Sansay, Horrors of St. Domingo
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ENG 361 – American Literature from 1860 to 1910 – spring 2016; texts include:
Dixon, The Clansman; Dubois, Souls of Black Folk; Turner, Frontier Thesis; William James, The
Principles of Psychology; Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Life on the Mississippi;
Wharton, House of Mirth; Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; Child, Romance of the
Republic;
ENGL 260 – Introduction to American Literature – texts and excerpts include:
Alger, Ragged Dick; Sinclair, The Jungle; Gonzalez, Dew on the Thorn; Crafts, The Bondswoman’s
Narrative; Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer; Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”;
Walter Raleigh, Discovery of Guiana; Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps; Faulkner, The Sound and the
Fury and Absalom, Absalom!
ENGL 366 - Utopias in Nineteenth-Century American Literature – texts and excerpts
include: More, Utopia; Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance; Child, Romance of the Republic; Bellamy,
Looking Backward; Griggs, Imperium in Imperio; Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Students in ENGL 366 won 1st place ($1000) and 2nd place ($500) in the English
Department’s Lady Geddes Essay Contest for Freshmen and Sophomores with
writing they produced for this class
Lecturer in English, Vanderbilt University – 2014-2015
ENGL 100, composition: The Athlete in Art, Media, and Society – summers 2014, 2015
The Natural motion picture; “The Death of Benny Paret,” Mailer; “Ex-Basketball Player,”
Updike; “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Housman; Chariots of Fire; “The Hero as Athlete,”
Fontenrose; “Football’s Loving Culture,” Dawidoff; Hoop Dreams motion picture; Between
Men by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; hooks, “Defining Patriarchy”
ENGL 102w: The University and the Student – spring 2015
“Clerk’s Tale,” Chaucer; The Prelude, Wordsworth; Portrait of the Artist, Joyce; “The Culture
Industry,” Adorno; “Inventing the University,” Bartholomae; The Closing of the Mind, Allan
Bloom; Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
ENGL 116: Intro to Poetry – 3 sections spring 2014; 2 sections fall 2014; 2 sections spring
2015 Poets taught: Wyatt, Shakespeare, Rochester, Milton, Pope, Wheatley, Blake,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Elizabeth Browning, Hopkins, Eliot, Stein, Hughes, McKay
ENGL 120w, intermediate composition: Voyages to the Moon – fall 2014
Orlando Furioso, Canto XXXIV; “Defense of Poesy,” Sidney; The Heroine, Barrett; “Hans
Pfaall,” Poe; From the Earth to the Moon, Verne; Jumpers, Stoppard
Graduate Instructor of English, Vanderbilt University – 2009-12
ENGL 102w: The Devil and other Loveable Scamps – spring 2012
Paradise Lost, Milton; Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake; Vathek, Beckford; Confessions of a
Justified Sinner, Hogg; Frankenstein, Shelley; Faust: Part One, Goethe; Book of Job (KJV)
ENGL 100w, composition: Some of the Great Ideas – fall 2011
Plato, Augustine, Bacon, Machiavelli, Locke, Pope, Wordsworth, Smith, Marx, Thoreau
ENGL 102w: Revolution and Literature – fall 2009; spring 2010; fall 2010; spring 2011
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Paradise Lost, Milton; Oroonoko, Behn; Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake; Tale of Two Cities,
Dickens; Second Discourse, Rousseau; Drop City, Boyle; A Doll’s House, Ibsen; The Rights of
Woman, Wollstonecraft
EXTERNAL FELLOWSHIPS
Global South Fellowship, New Orleans Center for the Gulf South – 2016
South-Central MLA Temporary Faculty Research Grant – 2016
Richard H. Popkin Research Travel Fund, ASECS – 2012, 2015, 2016
Mellon Partners Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – runner-up 2014, 2015
Visiting Scholar Grant, Southeastern Conference (SEC) – 2015
Susan Tane Travel Grant, International Edgar Allan Poe Society – 2015
Graduate Student Grant, Southeastern Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) – 2014
Jam-Pot Travel Grant, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) – 2014
Residential Research Fellowship, Newberry Library – 2013
Aubrey L. Williams Research Fellowship, ASECS – 2013
Taylor Research Fellowship, University of Virginia – 2012
INTERNAL FELLOWSHIPS
Research Fellowship, W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire & Modern French Studies – 2013
Martha Rivers Ingram Dissertation Fellowship, Vanderbilt English Department – 2012
Summer Research Award, Vanderbilt College of Arts and Sciences – 2012
Dissertation Enhancement Grant, Vanderbilt College of Arts and Sciences – 2012
Mary Rose Cain Scholarship, Vanderbilt University – 2011
Research Travel Grant to Montreal, Vanderbilt-McGill Initiative – 2010
Drake Research Fellowship UK travel, Vanderbilt University, English Department – 2009
University Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt English Department – 2008 – 2013
University Fellowship, Vanderbilt Graduate School – 2008 – 2013
SERVICE
Faculty Associate, McMurtry College, Rice University (2015 –
Mentor undergraduates on academic and residential issues, promote English classes
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Named Distinguished Faculty Associate of 2015
VUceptor, Vanderbilt University (selected for 2015 – 16; declined for Rice Lectureship)
Liaise with freshmen students on housing, safety on campus, academic life
Run o-week workshops addressing safety with sex, drugs, and alcohol
Organize social events fostering community among students outside of class and social clubs
Liaison, VU Rheney Fund, speaker Robin Valenza (UW-Madison), October 26 – 27, 2012
“Description in the Eighteenth Century,” workshop on precirculated materials
“Computational Thinking and Research Paradigms in the Humanities,” formal presentation
“Family in Academia,” brown-bag luncheon with graduate students on work/life balance
Treasurer, English Graduate Student Association (EGSA), 2011 – 2012
Won $5,500 in driving credit for EGSA members from Zipcar monthly contest
Ran seminars for PhD students on budgeting, saving, investing, credit, and mortgages
Opened and managed external checking account for EGSA purchases and reimbursements
Collected annual membership dues
Liaison, VU Circum-Atlantic Working Group, speaker Jennifer Greeson (UVA), October 27, 2011
“The US South and the Atlantic World,” workshop
“Venture Smith’s 1798 Narrative and the Prehistory of Possessive Individualism,” lecture
RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS
Ifeoma Nwankwo; Vanderbilt University; Nashville, TN
Assistant, Voices From Our America Project, 2013: voicesamerica.library.vanderbilt.edu/home.php
Jonathan Lamb; Vanderbilt University; Nashville, TN
Research Assistant, January 2009 –
Organized international colloquium, “The History of Fiction,” April 16, 2010
Copy-edited, fact-checked scholarly book, Evolution of Sympathy, Pickering & Chatto 2009
Smithsonian Institution; Washington, DC
Smithsonian Center Research Fellow, June – August 2005
Researched, wrote teaching text Latino Patriots: latino.si.edu/education/latinopatriots.htm
Wrote 10-page bibliography with sources from US, Mexico, Spain, 1700-1900
Thus satisfied requirement of $100,000 corporate gift
Frances Ferguson; University of Chicago; Chicago, IL
Research Assistant, January – June 2005
Found images circa 1815 for scholarly edition of Austen’s Emma, Longman 2006
Found eighteenth-century primary sources for related research projects
LANGUAGES
English Paleography, 1500 –
Conversational Spanish
Reading knowledge of French
PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
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American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
North American Society the Study of Romanticism (NASSR)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Society for Early Americanists (SEA)
Daniel Defoe Society
Edgar Allan Poe Society
South Central MLA (SCMLA)
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