Margaret Jay Jessee

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Associate Professor, Director, Undergraduate StudiesThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
University Hall 5055
(205) 975-3751

Research and Teaching Interests: Gender studies, women’s literature, American Literary Realism, Edith Wharton

Office Hours: By appointment

Education:

  • B.A., University of Tennessee, English/Minor in Psychology
  • M.A., University of Tennessee, English
  • Ph.D., University of Arizona, English

I teach courses on composition, American literature, and gender studies. I recently taught a seminar on Edith Wharton, a women’s literature and theory course, and a course on American literary realism. My courses encourage dynamic class discussions about important current and historical social issues along with close textual analysis of literature.

My specific area of research is late-19th and early 20th-century American literature. My scholarship focuses on issues of gender and form in the novel, and I have a particular interest in representations of science and medicine in American literature. I serve as the secretary of the Edith Wharton Society, and I am currently editing The Valley of Decision for the Complete Works of Edith Wharton, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

I also have the pleasure of directing the English Honors Program. If you are an English major and are interested in writing an honors thesis, please email me for more information and visit the English Honors webpage.

In my free time, I am a committed (though slow) runner, and I enjoy traveling and camping with my spouse and our two dogs, Stanley and Maisie.

  • Recent Courses
    • American Literary Realism
    • Women's Literature and Theory
    • Seminar: Edith Wharton
    • English Composition 102
  • Select Publications
    • “Edith Wharton and Christina Rossetti: Retelling Feminine Self-Sacrifice.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, edited by Emily J. Orlando. Bloomsbury Press (forthcoming 2021).
    • “‘Cutting Up Dead Babies’: The Literary Legacy of the Woman Physician as Abortionist.” Women’s Studies: an Interdisciplinary Journal (forthcoming fall 2020).
    • “‘Trying It On’ Again as Affect: Rethinking Feeling in The Age of Innocence” Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence: New Centenary Essays, edited by Arielle Zibrak. Bloomsbury Press. November, 2019: 115-131.
    • “Introduction: Medical Women in American Literature.” Special Issue of Arizona Quarterly: American Literature, Culture, and Theory on Medical Women in American Literature. 74.4 (2018): 1-13.
    • “Melodrama and Drama.” Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context, edited by Monika Elbert. Cambridge University Press. November, 2018: 157-166.
    • “‘The Third Sex’: Nineteenth-Century Doctresses in Liminal Literary Spaces.” Liminality, Hybridity, and American Women’s Literature: Thresholds in Women’s Writing, edited by Kristin J. Jacobson. Palgrave-Macmillan. May, 2018: 165-181.
    • “A New Material Approach to Reading Objects in Wharton’s Novels of Manners.” Edith Wharton: Critical Insights, edited by Myrto Drizou. Salem Press. December, 2017: 96-109.
    • “‘Fumbling with the Key’ to Narrative and Feminine Duality in Henry James’s Watch and Ward.” South Atlantic Review. 79.1-2 (2015): 143-157.
    • “Veiling Ladies and Narrative Masquerade in The Blithedale Romance.” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. 40.1 (2014): 62-82.
    • “Trying it On: Narration and Masking in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.” JML: Journal of Modern Literature. 36.1 (2012): 37-52.

    Guest Editor

    Special Issue of Arizona Quarterly: American Literature, Culture, and Theory. “Medical Women in American Literature.” Issue 74.4 (Winter 2018).