Nush Powell

Manushag N. “Nush” Powell, a literary historian and public scholar who most recently served as secretary of faculties and associate head of English at Purdue University, became the chair of the Department of English at Arizona State University on July 1.

Powell is a lauded administrator and an expert in parliamentary procedure. At Purdue, she also served as director of graduate studies in English, as a member of the graduate council, and as faculty chair, secretary and parliamentarian of the College of Liberal Arts senate. She is currently the parliamentarian to the American Society for 18th-Century Studies and a member of the board of directors of the American Institute of Parliamentarians.

A professor of English and comparative literature, Powell’s academic interests are in 18th-century British literature and culture, which extends to historical publishing, women’s periodicals and narratives of piracy. 

Her books include “Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals” (Bucknell 2012), “British Pirates in Print and Performance” (with Frederick Burwick: Palgrave 2015) and “Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690–1820s” (ed. with Jennie Batchelor: Edinburgh 2018). She is the editor of the Broadview Press edition of Daniel Defoe's “Captain Singleton” (2019), and plans a new edition of “The Buccaneers of America” for 2025. She is also the author of the Wondrium “The Real History of Pirates” course, and her essay on pirates and hook prosthetics will appear shortly in the Digital Defoe journal.

Powell earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature at Yale University, and both a Master of Arts and PhD in English literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught at Purdue since 2007, where she earned tenure in 2013.

At Purdue, Powell taught courses in academic publishing, British literature and culture and — sure to be of interest to students at ASU — on dragons and piracy in literature and history. 

Powell assumes the ASU leadership role in one of the largest and most visible departments of English in the nation, recently recognized in U.S. News and World Report for its internship and career preparation program.