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Deborah Weiss

Deborah Weiss

Associate Professor
Co-Coordinator, English Honors
Sponsor, English Majors & Minors Association

Education

  • PhD, English, University of Chicago, 2004
  • BA, English, Washington University, 1988

Research Areas

  • Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
  • 19th-Century British Literature

Bio

Deborah Weiss specializes in the long eighteenth century and the history of the novel. She received her BA summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the University of Chicago. In her research, Weiss focuses on the engagements of eighteenth-century women novelists with the social, educational, and economic ideas of the Enlightenment. Weiss teaches courses on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel, British literature in the Enlightenment, women novelists of the early Romantic period, sexuality and gender in the long eighteenth century, eighteenth-century children’s literature, Gothic fiction, and Jane Austen. She is the co-coordinator of the English Honors Program and the faculty sponsor for the English Majors & Minors Association (EMMA).

Selected Publications

Monographs

Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives
Manchester University Press, Forthcoming 2024

The Female Philosopher and her Afterlives: Mary Wollstonecraft, the British Novel, and the Transformations of Feminism, 1796-1811, Palgrave, 2017

Journal Articles

“Domestic Intelligence: Leonora and National Security,” European Romantic Review, 32.1 (Winter 2021): 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2020.1865164

“Maria Edgeworth’s Infant Economics: Capitalist Culture, Goodwill Networks, and ‘Lazy Lawrence,’” The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37: 3 (Fall 2014): 395-408,

https://doi-org.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.1111/1754-0208.12129

“Sense and Sensibility: Uncertain Knowledge and the Ethics of Everyday Life,” Studies in Romanticism, 52:2 (Summer 2013): 253-273, https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2013.0017

“The Form of Social Class and the Reformation of Ireland: Edgeworth’s Ennui,” Studies in the Novel, 45:1 (Spring 2013): 1-19, https://doi.org/doi:10.1353/sdn.2013.0001

“Sarah Scott’s ‘Attick School’: Moral Philosophy and Ethical Agency in Millenium Hall,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 24:3 (Spring 2012): 459-486, https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.24.3.459

“The Extraordinary Ordinary Belinda: Maria Edgeworth’s Female Philosopher,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 19:4 (Summer 2007): 441-462, https://doi.org/10.1353/ecf.2007.0027

“Suffering, Sentiment, and Civilization:  Pain and Politics in Wollstonecraft’s Short Residence,” Studies in Romanticism, 45:2  (Summer 2006): 199-221, https://doi.org/10.2307/25602044

 

Research Companion Articles and Encyclopedia Entries

“Maria Edgeworth” in The Routledge Research Companion to Romantic Women Writers, eds. Ann R. Hawkins and Catherine Blackwell, Routledge, 2023

Entries in The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, ed. April London (forthcoming)

Judith Alexander, The Young Lady of Fortune, Or, Her Lover Gained by Stratagem (1789)
Mrs. Johnson, Francis, The Philanthropist: An Unfashionable Tale (1786)
Mrs. Johnson, The Innocent Fugitive; Or Memoirs of a Lady of Quality (1789)
Mrs. (Emma) Hamilton, “I Can’t Afford It” And Other Tales (1813)