Bonnie Whitener

Bonnie Whitener

Instructor

Education

  • PhD, The University of Alabama

Research Areas

  • American Gothic Literature

Bio

Dr. Bonnie Whitener teaches English Composition courses as well as 200-level literature surveys. She has also taught courses in dystopian literature and continental and Asian philosophy. She attended the University of Maine for both her BA and her MA. Her MA was in English with a concentration in Women’s Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Alabama. Her academic specialization and the focus of her research is the American Gothic. More specifically, her interest lies in American texts that defy the trope of the European gothic novel. Her focus is on how the heroines of the novels are the characters who break the rules of the gothic narrative. She has held a fellowship in Women’s Studies at the University of Maine.

Selected Publications

Book in Progress

The American Counter-Gothic: Monstrous Women and Their Monstrous Texts in American Literature

Scholarship

  • “Great was her charity to others:” Eliza Wharton and the female body as cultural scapegoat in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette in 18th Century Fiction ed. Eugenia Zuroski. McMaster University Press (under review).

Poetry

  • “Skeleton” in The New Yorker ed. David Remnick (under review)
  • “Dunelanguage” in The New Yorker ed, David Remice (under review)
  • “There are only so many ways particles combine,” Stolen Island Review, 2003
  • “Masai,” Stolen Island Review, 2003
  • “Mexico,” Stolen Island Review, 2002