Devoney Looser
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Fax: 480-965-3451
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Ross-Blakley Hall 372 PO Box 871401 TEMPE, AZ 85287-1401
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Mail code: 1401Campus: Tempe
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Devoney Looser is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University. (Her name is pronounced DEV-oh-nee LOE-sir.). She is the author or editor of eleven books on Jane Austen and literature by women, including the biography Sister Novelists: Jane and Anna Maria Porter in the Age of Austen (Bloomsbury, 2022). She is a Guggenheim Fellow, an NEH Public Scholar, and a Rockefeller Bellagio Fellow.
Her previous books include The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) and The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Looser’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, and the TLS. She's written on professional issues for The Chronicle of Higher Education and has been interviewed about Austen on CNN.
She teaches ASU undergraduate and graduate courses (in person and online) in British literature, the history of the novel, and women’s writings. She's played roller derby as Stone Cold Jane Austen and serves as faculty adviser to the ASU Derby Devils. For further information, see Devoney ’s website or subscribe to her author newsletter.
- Ph.D. English, with certification in Women’s Studies, SUNY - Stony Brook, NY. 1993
- B.A. Summa cum laude with English Honors, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, MN. 1989
- Digital Humanities Observatory Summer School Participant, Royal Irish Academy, June 26-July 2, 2010.
Looser's areas of expertise include women's writings, British literature, Jane Austen, the history of the novel, feminist studies, age and aging studies, historiography, and women in sport. She is also faculty adviser to the ASU Derby Devils, the co-ed collegiate roller derby team.
Books and Edited Books
- Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës, Bloomsbury US, 2022. 576 pages.
- The Making of Jane Austen. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
- Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
- British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, 2005.
- Edition of Anna Maria Porter’s Artless Tales II (1795/6) (co-editor, with Erika Cleveland, Claire McCarville, and A. J. Otero), Sydney, Australia: The Juvenilia Press (University of New South Wales), 2023.
- The Daily Jane Austen (editor), University of Chicago Press, 2019.
- Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (introduction, with supplemental essays), Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2019.
- Edition of Jane West’s A Gossip’s Story (1796) (with Melinda O’Connell and Caitlin Kelly), Valancourt, 2015.
- Cambridge Companion to Women’s Writing of the Romantic Period (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue (co-editor, with E. Ann Kaplan). U of Minnesota P, 1997.
- Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism (editor). Palgrave Macmillan, 1995.
Recent Essays
“To Find Great Female Novelists, Stop Looking in Jane Austen’s Shadow,” The Washington Post, Book World Section, 27 November 2022, print and online. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/25/austen-bronte-great-female-novelists/
“The Pains and Pleasures of Taking Decades to Write a Book,” Lit Hub, 25 October 2022, https://lithub.com/the-pains-and-pleasures-of-taking-decades-to-write-a-book/ (Lead story in Lit Hub Weekly, October 24-28, 2022).
“Heroics All at Sea: Jane Austen’s Brother and ‘Crushing’ the Slave Trade,” TLS, 8 July 2022, p. 5. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/jane-austen-brother-slave-trad-essay-devoney-looser/
“Breaking the Silence: The Austen Family’s Complex Entanglements with Slavery,” TLS, 21 May 2021, pp. 2-3. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/jane-austen-family-slavery-essay-devoney-looser/
Courses
2023 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ENG 501 | Approaches to Research |
2023 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ENG 535 | Study 18/19th Cent Britsh Lit |
2022 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ENG 535 | Study 18/19th Cent Britsh Lit |
| ENG 635 | Advanced Studies British Lit |
2022 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ENG 535 | Study 18/19th Cent Britsh Lit |
| ENG 384 | Gender&Sexuality Lit/Culture |
Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellowship, 2021.
Guggenhim Fellow, 2018.