Dr. Melissa J. Ganz

Dr. Melissa J. GanzMarquette University

Marquette Hall, 237

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3480melissa.ganz@marquette.edu

Associate Professor and Director, Honors English

English

I work on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, with a particular focus on the relationship between literature, law, and ethics. I also have broad interests in gender studies, transatlantic studies, and the history of the novel. My research is driven by the desire to understand how debates about law and justice have shaped literary texts in the past and how literature can help us think through questions of law and justice that remain of concern to this day. I hold a Ph.D. in English Literature and an M.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. My work has been generously supported by a number of fellowships, including a 2021–22 Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Princeton University's Center for Human Values and a 2024–26 Way Klingler Faculty Fellowship from Marquette.

My first book, Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment (University of Virginia Press, 2019), reveals the centrality of nuptial law to early novels, showing how writers from Daniel Defoe to Mary Wollstonecraft responded and contributed to debates about the legal regulation of marriage. My edited volume, British Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2025), highlights the contributions of eighteenth-century studies to the law-and-literature enterprise while showing how imaginative writers participated in a range of legal developments during a period known for both legal and literary innovation.

I have published essays on legal and ethical dimensions of texts by authors including Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Margaret Atwood. I have also written on the evolution of law and literature as an interdisciplinary field and on courtroom storytelling in nineteenth-century America. My current projects include a study of eighteenth-century literature and penal reform, a study of nineteenth-century fiction and criminal responsibility, and a series of essays on Romantic women writers' engagements with moral philosophy. In addition, I am co-editing a multi-volume collection of primary-source materials (under contract with Routledge) related to British law and literature in the long nineteenth century.

In my teaching, as in my research, I emphasize the interplay between literary form and historical change. I teach a range of classes, from introductory surveys to special topics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, law and literature, and the history of the novel. Recent undergraduate offerings include two legal-themed classes, “Legal Fictions of the Enlightenment” and “Crime and Punishment in English Fiction,” which count toward the interdisciplinary minor in Law and Society; a section of English 3000 (the gateway class for English majors) entitled “Protest and Rebellion in the British Tradition,” which surveys literature from the late eighteenth century to the present day; and a first-year Honors seminar that examines representations of justice and judgment from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Melville and Douglass to Ida Fink and Ferdinand von Schirach. At the graduate level, my courses include “Literature and the Passions in the Age of Reason,” “Literature and Politics in the Age of Revolution,” and “The Eighteenth-Century 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.

From 2019 to 2021, I served as Director of Strategy in the English Department, where I oversaw outreach and marketing efforts and organized career-oriented and community-building events. I remain committed to fostering a broad understanding of the value of English and the humanities and their centrality to public life. I also enjoy fostering and participating in interdisciplinary exchanges and recently completed a term on the Executive Committee of the MLA Forum on Law and the Humanities. Here at Marquette, I convene the Humanities Research Colloquium and serve as Director of the Honors English Program. I look forward to connecting with students and colleagues who share my research and teaching interests.

Courses Taught

Undergraduate:

• Foundations in Rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Criminal Justice
• Core Honors First-Year Seminar: Imagining Evil
• Core Honors First-Year Seminar: Justice and Judgment in the Western Imagination
• Introduction to Literary Studies: Protest and Rebellion in the British Tradition
• The Rise of the Novel
• Legal Fictions of the Enlightenment
• Crime and Punishment in English Fiction
• Victorian Literature and Social Reform
• Humanities Honors Project Seminar

Graduate:

• The Eighteenth-Century Novel
• Literature and the Passions in the Age of Reason
• Literature and Politics in the Age of Revolution

Research Interests

• British Literature and Culture, 1700–1900
• History of the Novel
• Law and Literature
• Literature and Ethics
• Moral, Social, and Political Thought
• Women’s and Gender Studies
• Transatlantic Studies

Publications

Book:

• Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment (University of Virginia Press, 2019). Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize in Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Edited Volume:

• British Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Articles and Book Chapters:

• "Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and the Legal Fiction of Marital Unity," forthcoming in The Elgar Handbook on Legal Fictions, ed. Kristin Albrecht, Lisa Siraganian, and Simon Stern (Edward Elgar Publishing).
• “Testimony, Truth, and Judgment in Alias Grace,” in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Margaret Atwood, ed. Lauren Rule Maxwell (MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series, 2025), 84–93.
• "Introduction," in British Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Melissa J. Ganz (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 1–24.
• "A Higher Tribunal": Equity, Law, and the Family in Sir Charles Grandison," in British Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Melissa J. Ganz (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 103–24.
• "Eighteenth-Century British Law and Literature: A Survey of the Field," Literature Compass, 22, no. 2 (June 2025).
• “Legal Vengeance and Popular Violence: Reimagining Justice in The Heart of Midlothian,” in Law, Equity, and Romantic Writing: Seeking Justice in the Age of Revolutions, ed. Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), 86–104.
• "Literature and the Law," in The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English, ed. Sarah Eron, Nicole N. Aljoe, and Suvir Kaul (Routledge, 2024), 203–15.
• "Marriage Law," in Daniel Defoe in Context, ed. Albert J. Rivero and George Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 257–64.
• "Corporate Persons, Collective Responsibility, and the Literary Imagination," Critical Analysis of Law: An International and Interdisciplinary Law Review 9, no. 2 (Fall 2022): 46–57. Book Forum on Lisa Siraganian's Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons (Oxford UP, 2021).
• "'A Kind of Insanity in My Spirits': Frankenstein, Childhood, and Criminal Intent," Eighteenth-Century Studies 56, no. 1 (Fall 2022): 53–74.
• "'The fidelity of promising': Egoism and Obligation in Austen," Review of English Studies 73, no. 309 (April 2022): 344–60.  Advance Access (February 2, 2022).
• "Debating Persuasion," in Approaches to Teaching Austen's "Persuasion," ed. Marcia McClintock Folsom and John Wiltshire (MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series, 2021), 175–82.
• "Carrying On Like a Madman: Insanity and Responsibility in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 70, no. 3 (December 2015): 363–97.
• "Freedom and Fetters: Nuptial Law in Burney’s The Wanderer,” in Impassioned Jurisprudence: Law, Literature, and Emotion, 1760-1848, ed. Nancy E. Johnson (Bucknell University Press, 2015), 66–88.
• “Clandestine Schemes: Burney’s Cecilia and the Marriage Act,” Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 54, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 25–51.
• “Binding the Will: George Eliot and the Practice of Promising,” ELH 75, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 565–602.
• “‘A Strange Opposition’: The Portrait of a Lady and the Divorce Debates,” Henry James Review 27, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 156–74.
• “Moll Flanders and English Marriage Law,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 17, no. 2 (January 2005): 157–82.
• “Wicked Women and Veiled Ladies: Gendered Narratives of the McFarland-Richardson Tragedy,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 9, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 255–303.

Shorter Essays and Other Contributions:

• "Exploring Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century," Fifteen Eighty Four, November 2025.
• "Marriage," in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, ed. Robert Spoo and Simon Stern (Edward Elgar, January 2025), 302–06.
• "Crime Logs and Commonplace Books: Creative Engagements with Legal- and Social Justice-Themed Literature," in Keats-Shelley Journal+ Special Issue on Commonplacing and Commonplace Books, ed. Kacie L. Wills and Olivia Loksing Moy, vol. 3 (October 2024).
• Exhibition Labels for Cruelty in Perfection (Plate III of The Four Stages of Cruelty) by William Hogarth and Court of Chancery, Lincoln Inn's Hall by Augustus C. Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson, "Exploring the Marquette Core Curriculum--Basic Needs and Justice: The Pursuit of Human Flourishing," Haggerty Museum of Art, Spring 2023.
• “Debate,” in The Pocket Instructor: Literature: 101 Exercises for the College Classroom, ed. Diana Fuss and William A. Gleason (Princeton University Press, 2015), 21–23.
• Reviews in American Journal of Legal History; Journal of British Studies; Law, Culture and the Humanities; Law and Literature; Modern Philology; Victorian Studies; and Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities.

Honors and Awards

• Way Klingler Fellowship, Marquette University, 2024–26.
• Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowship, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, 2021–22.
• Walker Cowen Memorial Prize in Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Virginia Press, 2018.
• Way Klingler Young Scholar Award, Marquette University, 2015.
• Principal Investigator, Strategic Innovation Fund Grant, Marquette University, 2015–17.
• Interdisciplinary Summer Grant, Institute for Women's Leadership, 2023.
• Summer Faculty Fellowship, Marquette University, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021.
• Faculty Research Mini-Grant, Center for Peacemaking, Marquette University, 2021.
• Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grant, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2023.
• Harvard College Fellowship, Department of English, Harvard University, 2010–12.
• Certificate of Teaching Excellence, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education, Harvard University, 2010, 2011, 2012.
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Introduction to the Humanities Program, Stanford University, 2007–10.
• Honorable Mention, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Essay Prize, 2008.  
• Junior Scholar, Fifth Annual Law and Humanities Workshop, 2006 (sponsored by Columbia Law School, Georgetown Law School, UCLA School of Law, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture).
• Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University, 2005.
• John F. Enders Fellowship, Yale University, 2005.
• Catharine Macaulay Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2004.

Additional Information

Office Hours
Fall 2025

• TuTh 2:00-3:30
• By appointment

Teaching Schedule

Fall 2025

• ENGL 4423/101 TuTh 12:30–1:45 Cudahy Hall 114
  • Legal Fictions of the Enlightenment
• ENGL 4999H/901 TBA
  • Honors Senior Thesis