Ļć½¶Ö±²„scholar spotlights early modern women writers as key to future studies in book, upcoming campus presentation
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.āLara Dodds, professor and head of Mississippi State's Department of English, highlights the often-overlooked literary contributions of women in the early modern period in the new book āEarly Modern Womenās Writing and the Future of Literary History.ā
Published in June by Oxford University Press, Dodds and coauthor Michelle Dowd, the Hudson Strode Professor of English in the University of Alabamaās Department of English, challenge traditional ideas about authorship, canon and literary value. They examine how early womenās writingāoften dismissed as belated or out of step with critical trendsāoffers fresh opportunities to rethink literary history and teaching. The authors contend this belatedness is not a flaw but a strength that can help shape the future of literary studies.
Dodds and Dowd will present a campus talk on the book Wednesday [Sept. 17] at 4 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Libraryās John Grisham Room. For more information on the event, contact Ļć½¶Ö±²„Department of English Associate Professor Eric Vivier at edv34@msstate.edu.
āMichelle and I frequently had conversations about how the research in our subfield, early modern womenās writing, was not recognized or integrated into literary studies as a whole,ā Dodds said. āWe were inspired to write this book because we thought research based on early women writersāsuch as Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson and Elizabeth Caryācould help all literature scholars address the big questions in the field.ā
Dodds earned her bachelorās degree in English from DePauw University and both her masterās degree and Ph.D. in English, with a focus on 17th-century literature, from Brown University. Her teaching interests include John Milton, early modern British literature, early modern womenās writing and research methods.
She is also the author of āThe Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendishā (Duquesne University Press, 2013) and āMiltonās Other Worlds,ā part of a series in āUncircumscribed Minds: Reading Milton Deeplyā (Susquehanna University Press, 2007). Her scholarship has appeared in leading journals including Milton Studies, Early Modern Studies Journal, Restoration, English Literary Renaissance and The John Donne Journal.
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