Assistant Professor

I specialize in British literature and culture of the long eighteenth century, with particular interests in relations of literature, law, and ethics as well as gender studies, transatlantic studies, and the history of the novel. My research and teaching examine the ways in which imaginative writers took up questions of justice and rights that were of broad public concern in the Enlightenment. My approach to these questions draws from my interdisciplinary background; I received a Ph.D. in English Literature and an M.A. in American Studies from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Before coming to Marquette, I held postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of English at Harvard and the Introduction to the Humanities Program at Stanford.

My first book project, Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment, reveals the central role of novels in debates about the contractual nature of the nuptial tie. Reading fiction alongside legal and philosophical treatises, parliamentary speeches, and periodical essays, the study argues that novelists imagine marriage as a formal, public tie even as they reconceive this tie as an affective agreement between two equal agents. My essay on nuptial law in Moll Flanders appeared in Eighteenth-Century Fiction; an article on clandestine marriage in Burney’s Cecilia is forthcoming in The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation. I have also written on problems of freedom and obligation in texts by George Eliot (ELH) and Henry James (The Henry James Review). I am currently working on two new projects. The first examines intercultural encounters in the eighteenth century transatlantic imagination; the second explores the role of British novels in Enlightenment controversies about the moral emotions.

I teach a range of courses, from introductory surveys to special topics in eighteenth-century British and transatlantic literature, law and literature, and the history of the novel. I also maintain an active interest in pedagogy and have led workshops on teaching strategies for beginning and advanced instructors in the humanities and social sciences.

Teaching Fields

Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Transatlantic Literature
Law and Literature
Gender Studies
History of the Novel

Office Hours

Spring 2013

TUTH 10:45-12:15

Teaching Schedule

Spring 2013

2710/106 Intro to Lit: Fiction TUTH 3:30-4:45 DS465
6300/101 Study Restoration & 18th C Lit: Lit & Politics in the Age of Revolution TUTH 12:30-1:45 Wehr Physics 150

Research Interests

Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Law and Literature
Gender Studies
Anglo-American Literary and Cultural Relations
Moral, Social, and Political Thought
Sentimental Culture and the History of Emotion

Selected Publications

“‘Clandestine Schemes’: Burney’s Cecilia and the Marriage Act,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (forthcoming, Vol. 54:1, Spring 2013)
“Binding the Will: George Eliot and the Practice of Promising,” ELH 75 (2008): 565-602.
“‘A Strange Opposition’: The Portrait of a Lady and the Divorce Debates,” The Henry James Review 27 (2006): 156-174.
“Moll Flanders and English Marriage Law,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 17 (2005): 157-182.
“Wicked Women and Veiled Ladies: Gendered Narratives of the McFarland-Richardson Tragedy,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 9 (1997): 255-303.

Honors/Awards

Harvard College Fellowship, Department of English, Harvard University, 2010-12
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Introduction to the Humanities Program, Stanford University, 2007-10
Award of Teaching Excellence, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education, Harvard University, 2010, 2011, and 2012
Honorable Mention, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Essay Prize, 2008
Junior Scholar, Fifth Annual Interdisciplinary Law and Humanities Workshop, USC Law School, 2006
Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University, 2005
John F. Enders Fellowship, Yale University, 2005
Catharine Macaulay Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2003
Order of the Coif, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 1997
Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University, 1994

MELISSA J. GANZ

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