Alison Booth

(1986)

Professor

Victorian, Feminist Criticism, Narrative Theory, Biography, Literary Tourism

Degrees

Ph.D. Princeton, 1986

M.A. Princeton, 1983

M.F.A. Cornell, 1979

B.A. Bennington, 1976

Interests

I enjoy teaching courses in Victorian fiction, women writers, gothic, narrative theory, auto/biography, and travel. To my feminist approach to cultural history in Britain and North America since 1830, I have more recently added my work in bibliography, publishing history, and digital humanities.  A continuing theme in my books and articles has been the reception history of authors and the construction of collective biographical histories, or prosopographies, from the reconception of a common life and a female literary tradition by George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, to the imagined community figured in monuments and representative lists such as Mount Rushmore, to literary canons and tours. I have persistently worked across the boundaries of period (nineteenth to twentieth centuries), nationality (particularly transatlantic Anglophone), media and audience (word-image, novel and film, celebrity and popular culture). Since 1995, my work in narrative theory has focused on life writing and the prevalent form of collections of short biographies, concentrated in my bibliography of collective biographies of women and the related book, How to Make It as a Woman (2004).  The annotated bibliography has been developed as an online site sponsored by the University of Virginia Library, and now forms part of the peer-reviewed NINES digital consortium.  In 2008 we launched a new version, and I plan to integrate this into teaching and research in digital humanities and forms of life writing.  Meanwhile, I am nearing completion of a book, another exploration of reception, cultural tradition, and collective biographical representation.  Entitled “Homes and Haunts: Transatlantic Author Country,” it traces the history of literary tourism and the rise of author house museums in tandem with regionalism, national literatures, and professional criticism.

Books

  • Co-editor, with Jerome Beaty, Paul Hunter, and Kelly Mays, Norton Introduction to Literature, 9th ed.  New York: Norton, 2005.  10th ed. forthcoming 2009.
  • Wuthering Heights: A Cultural Edition, ed. Alison Booth.  New York: Longman, 2009. (publication winter 2008).
  • How to Make It as a Woman: Collective Biographical History from Victoria to the Present, in Women in Culture and Society, ed. Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Winner of the Barbara Penny Kanner Award.
  • Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure, ed. Alison Booth. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993.
  • Greatness Engendered: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, in Reading Woman Writing Series, ed. Shari Benstock and Celeste Schenck. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Bibliography

Collective Biographies of Women: An Annotated Bibliography. Based on bibliography of 930 collections in How to Make It as a Woman. Accepted NINES consortium, 2007.  Images, links to other databases and digitized books, and other functions and features added June, 2008.  Continuing project.

Selected Articles Since 1995

  • “Life Writing,” The Cambridge Companion to British Literature 1837-1914, ed. Joanne Shattock, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009.
  • “Dickens Country, Dickens World, and Dickensian Time Travel,” in Literary Tourism and Nineteenth-Century Culture, ed. Nicola J. Watson. London: Palgrave, forthcoming.    
  • “Author Country: Longfellow, the Brontës, and Anglophone Homes and Haunts,” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Special Issue: Victorian Internationalisms, ed. Lauren Goodlad and Julia M. Wright, 48 (November 2007). 
  • “Revisiting the Homes and Haunts of Mary Russell Mitford,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 30:1 (2008): 39-65.
  • “Fighting for Lives in the ODNB, or Taking Prosopography Personally,” Journal of Victorian Culture 10:2 (2005): 267-79.
  • “Men and Women of the Time: Victorian Prosopographies,” in Life Writing and Victorian Culture, ed. David Amigoni.  London: Ashgate, 2005.  41-66. 
  • “The Changing Faces of Mount Rushmore: Collective Portraiture and Participatory National Heritage,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz.  Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.  337-55. 
  • “The Real Right Place of Henry James: Homes and Haunts,” The Henry James Review 25 (2004): 216-27.
  • “Neo-Victorian Self-Help, or Cider House Rules,” American Literary History 14 (2002): 284-310.
  • “The Lessons of the Medusa: Anna Jameson and Collective Biographies of Women,” Victorian Studies 42:2 (Winter 1999/2000): 257-88.
  • “The Scent of a Narrative: Rank Discourse in Flush and Written on the Body," Narrative 8 (January 2000): 3-22.
  • “The Mother of All Cultures: Camille Paglia and Feminist Mythologies,” The Kenyon Review 21 (1999): 27-45.
  • "Illustrious Company: Victoria Among Other Women in Anglo-American Role Model Anthologies," in Remaking Queen Victoria, ed. Margaret Homans and Adrienne Munich.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.  59-78.
  • "From Miranda to Prospero: The Works of Fanny Kemble," Victorian Studies (Winter, 1995): 227-54.

Selected Lectures and Conferences (Since 2002)

  • Keynote: “Ghost Walking in Cheyne Row: Carlyle’s House,” Victorian Heritage, St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden, Wales, June 2008.
  • Keynote: “Transatlantic Author Country,” Literary Tourism and Nineteenth-Century Culture, Institute for English Studies, University of London, 8 June 2007.
  • Keynote: “The Likes of Sister Dora: Representing Eminent Victorian Women,” Victorians Institute, 21 October 2006.
  • Featured Workshop: “Literature Travels, but the Author Is Always at Home,” North American Victorian Studies Conf, 1 Sept. 2006.
  • Invited Lecture: “A Guide to Prosopography: Collecting Authors’ Homes and Haunts,” Department of English, UCLA, 23 January 2003.
  • Session Organizer: “Sketches from Life,” Autobiography, Biography and Life Writing Division, MLA, 2007.
  • Seminar Organizer: “The Author Business,” Modernist Studies Association 7, Chicago, 3 November 2005.“Living Periodically,” Victorian Division Panel, MLA Convention, 2005.
  • “Ghosts, Relics, and Replicas: Dickensian Homes and Haunts,” Dickens Project, 2005.
  • “A Grammar of Literary Pilgrimage,” Narrative Conference, 7-10 April 2005.
  • ”National Gothic, or Literary Homes and Haunts,” INCS, London, 11 July 2003.
  • “Homes and Haunts, or Gothic Life Narratives,” Narrative, 29 March 2003.
  • “The Real Right Place: Henry James and Homes and Haunts,” MLA, 2002.
  • “Class and the Houses of Authorship,” Modernist Studies Assoc., 2002.
  • “Compulsory Typology: Generations of Historical Women,” International Autobiography and Biography Assoc., Melbourne, Australia, 15-19 July 2002.
  • “The Author in the House: A Woman’s Guide to British Literary Geography,” British Women Writers Conference, 18-21 April 2002.
  • “Collecting Authoriana: Carlyle’s House and the Literary Museum,” INCS, 2002.

Selected Awards and Professional Activity

  • Professor, Bread Loaf School of English, summer 2006, 2008.
  • Project Coordinator, Center for the Liberal Arts, 2003-present (Short courses for high school English teachers in the area and state).
  • Barbara Penny Kanner Award for Bibliomethodology, Western Association of Women Historians, for How to Make It as a Woman.
  • Fellow, Virginia Center for the Humanities, 1993.
  • President, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, 2005.  Perkins Prize Committee for Best Book on Narrative, 2006-2007.
  • Conference Co-organizer: 3rd Annual North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Virginia, 30 September-2 October 2005.
  • “The Margins and Settings of Life-Writing,” University of Virginia, February 22-23, 2002.
  • Editorial Boards: University of Virginia Press, 2005-07; Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies; LIT; Lifewriting Annual.
  • MLA: Executive Committee, Autobiography, Biography, and Life Writing 2006-present  ; Member, Lowell Prize Committee, 2007; Chair, 2008; Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee, 1996-1998; Chair, Committee on Honors and Awards, 1997-1998.