Amanda Louise Johnson
Assistant Professor of English & World Literature
With Pitzer Since: 2023
Field Group: English & World Literature
Campus Address: Scott Hall 224
Campus Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: See Faculty Directory
Educational Background
Ph.D. Vanderbilt University
M.A. University of York (UK)
B.A. University of Chicago
Research Interests
Early Hemispheric American Literature, 19 th -Century US literature, Atlantic World Literature, Transatlantic Anglophone Literature before 1900, Early Caribbean Literature, Southern Literature, Colonialism, Critical Race Theory
Courses
American Literature before 1865
American Gothic
Book Projects
Romancing the New World: Anglo-American Narratives of Self-Creation [under revision at the request of an academic press]
De-Canonizing the Canon [in preparation]
Forthcoming Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Anti-Abolitionism, US-Southern Writers, & the ‘Negatively Capable’ Poet John Keats,” in ELH
“Wealth and Exchange in Colonial America,” for Money in American Literature, an installment of the Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture series
“Neo-Medievalism, Reactionary Anti-Capitalism, and Academic Racial Exclusion,” for The Middle Ages and ItsCultural Afterlives in the American South, forthcoming essay collection
Publications
“Nobody’s Gold: Fictionality in Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (1596),” in EAL 56.3 (2021): 699-731. (Note: Journal editors’ nominee, 1921 Prize for Best Essay in American Literature, 2021).
“Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668) & Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman (1700/01),” Restoration 43.1 (2019): 9-34.
“Thomas Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxon Genesis: A Romance,” Modern Philology 114.3 (2017): 680-701. (Note: Journal editors’ nominee, James Clifford L. Prize for outstanding scholarship in 18th-century literature, 2017).
“Thomas Jefferson’s Ossianic Romance,” Studies in 18th-Century Culture 45 (2016): 19-35.
“William Hazlitt, Liber Amoris, & the Imagination” European Romantic Review 25.6 (2014): 743-56.
Other Publications
“2021 SEASECS Conference Review,” in Early American Literature 57.1 (Spring, 2022): 342-6.
“Virginia Before Jefferson—Spotlight: William Byrd II,” The Routledge Companion to
Literature of the U.S. South (2022), 258-260.
Absalom, Absalom!” Literary Geography: an Encyclopedia of Real & Imagined Place Settings (ABC-Clio, 2019), 1-4 (Note: collection won 1 st place in reference category for Eric Hoffer Award, 2020; also named 2020 finalist for Evvy awards by Colorado Independent Publishers’ Association).
“Social Network Analysis of Jefferson’s Favorite Poet,” Thomas Jefferson’s Life & Times 2.2 (Spring, 2019): 41-44
“Teaching Romantic Poe,” Romantic Textualities, www.romtext.org.uk/teaching-romanticism-xx-transatlantic-romanticism-part-1.
“Phillis Wheatley,” The Colonial Era to the 19th Century in American Literature, Gale Cengage database, (2016).
“Samson Occom,” The Colonial Era to the 19th Century in American Literature, Gale Cengage database, (2016).
Selected Research Presentations
“Old Deb and Claiming Groundlessness in Brown’s Edgar Huntly,” ALA Symposium; Sant Fe, NM; Oct. 25-8, 2023.
“Early American Literature, Money, and Chaotic Value,” SEA Biennial Meeting; College Park, MD; June 10, 2023.
“The Reconquista, Colonel Jack, & Colonial Romance,” MLA annual conference; San Francisco, CA; January 7, 2023.
“Medievalism, Reactionary Intellectualism, and Racial-Capitalist Violence,” Conference on Race and American Medievalism in the US South and Beyond; Tuscaloosa, AL; September 8-10, 2022.
“Junk Pedagogies, Insular Radicalism, & America’s Racist Canon,” SAMLA virtual conference; Nov. 4, 2021.
“Autopoiesis, Slavery, White Privilege, & the Law in the New Republic,” virtual ASECS; April 9, 2021.
“Phillis Wheatley Peters, Thomas Jefferson, & Religious Freedom,” virtual SEA Biennial Meeting; March 7, 2021.
“‘Enlightened’ Patriarchy & Maternal Erasure in Royall Tyler’s The Contrast,” ISECS; Edinburgh, UK; July 14, 2019.
“How the New Critics Invented John Keats,” Louisville Conference; Louisville, KY; February 21, 2019.
“The Rise of Fictionality in Ralegh’s Discovery of Guiana.” SCMLA Annual Meeting; San Antonio, TX; Oct. 12, 2018.
“The Declaration of Independence as Utopia,” SEA Biennial Meeting; Tulsa, OK; March 2, 2017.
“The Isle of Pines and Bastard Utopias,” ASECS; Los Angeles, CA; March 20, 2015.
“Thomas Jefferson and James Macpherson,” ASECS, Williamsburg; March 21, 2014.
“Thomas Jefferson’s Saxon Genesis,” SEA Biennial Meeting; Savannah, GA; March 2, 2013.
“Transatlantic Whiteness in Poe’s Southern Gothic,” NEASECS Annual Meeting; Buffalo, NY; October 23, 2010.
“Hazlitt’s Imagination and the State,” First-year PhD Student Symposium, Vanderbilt University; April 3, 2009.
“Georg Forster & South Pacific Colonialism,” CECS Postgraduate Forum, University of York (UK); May 13, 2008.
