Elizabeth M. Sheehan
Sheehan 1
Elizabeth M. Sheehan
School of Writing, Literature, and Film3635 NW Jackson Avenue
Oregon State UniversityCorvallis, OR 97331
Moreland Hall 318
Corvallis, OR 97330(646) 339-5112
http://oregonstate.edu/cla/wlf/elizabeth-sheehan
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Assistant Professor of English, School of Writing, Literature and Film and Faculty in Women
Gender and Sexuality Studies, Oregon State University, 2012–Present
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ithaca College, 2010–2012
EDUCATION
Ph.D. English Language and Literature, University of Virginia, 2011
Dissertation: “Modes of Dress and Redress: Aesthetics, Politics, and Fashion in
Transatlantic Modernism”
Committee: Deborah McDowell (chair), Rita Felski, Michael Levenson, Murray Milner
M.A. English Language and Literature, University of Virginia, 2006
B.A. English Language and Literature and the Special Program in the Humanities, Yale
University, 2002, Cum Laude, Distinction in both majors
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, and AWARDS
Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Oregon State University, 2013-2014
Faculty Internationalization Grant, Oregon State University, 2013
Ithaca College English Department Merit Award in Scholarship, 2011
Ithaca College Center for Faculty Research and Development Grant, 2011 and 2012
Ithaca College Educational Grant Initiative Award, 2010 and 2011
Bradley Fellowship, Department of English, University of Virginia, 2009-2010
Award for the Best Feminist Essay Presented at the Rocky Mountain MLA Conference, 2008
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, English Department, University of Virginia, 2008
Dissertation Acceleration Fellowship, UVA Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2008
Zora Neale Hurston Prize for the Best Essay by a Graduate Student, Studies in Women and
Gender Program, University of Virginia, 2008
Griffis Prize for Best Essay by a First-year Graduate Student, UVA English Department, 2004
Presidential Fellowship, University of Virginia, 2003-2008
BOOK PROJECT
“Modernism à la Mode”
This project brings together texts, images, and clothing to demonstrate how the phenomenon of fashion shaped the form and purposes of modernist fiction. It argues that during a period in which new dress styles defined and remade gender and racial norms, fashion described the potential and limits of aesthetic and social transformation for writers including Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Nella Larsen, W.E.B. Du Bois, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Drawing on fashion theory and intervening in debates about the uses of literature and the politics of style, “Modernism à la Mode” shows that fashion defined the terms and reception of modernism’s investment in style as a way to re-imagine the nature and role of objects, agency, authorship, communities, and political discourse.
PUBLICATIONS
Edited Book
Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion, Co-edited with Ilya Parkins. Durham, N.H.: University
Press of New England, 2011.
Book Chapters
“Introduction,” Co-authored with Ilya Parkins in Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion. Eds.
Parkins and Sheehan. Durham, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2011: 1-19.
“The Face of Fashion: Race and Fantasy in James VanDerZee’s Photography and Jessie Fauset’s
Fiction” in Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion. Eds. Parkins and Sheehan.
Durham, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2011: 180-202.
“Dressmaking at the Omega Workshops: Experiments in Art and Fashion” in Beyond
Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops, 1913-1919. Alexandra Gerstein, ed.
London: Courtauld Institute and the Fontanka Press, 2009: 50-59.
Solicited, In-Progress
“Jessie Redmon Fauset,” 7,000-9,000 word spotlight essay in The Blackwell Companion to the
Harlem Renaissance. Ed. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson. Under contract with Wiley
Blackwell.
“Literary Representations,” 8,000-9,000 word chapter in Fashion in the Modern Age. Ed.
Alexandra Palmer. A Cultural History of Fashion Series. Ed. Susan J. Vincent. Under
contract with Bloomsbury Press.
Book Reviews
Joint Review of Alison Pease, Modernism, Feminism, and the Culture of Boredom (Columbia UP:
2012) and The Modernist Party, ed. Kate McLoughlin (Edinburgh UP, 2013). Woolf Studies Annual Vol. 20 (2014) (in press).
Review of Marlis Schweitzer, When Broadway was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American
Culture (U of Pennsylvania P, 2009) . Modern Drama 53:3 (Fall 2010): 423-425.
Review of recent volumes in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series: Conversation with Julian Fry by S.P.
Rosenbaum, Julian Bell: The Violent Pacifist by Patricia Laurence, Laura Stephen:
a memoir by Hilary Newman, and Roger Fry, Apostle of Good Taste, and Venice by John Lello. Woolf Studies Annual 15 (March 2009): 201-206.
The New York Times Book Review:
• Review of Sander Gilman, Fat Boys: A Slim Book, 7/11/2004.
• Review of Arthur Krystal, Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature, 1/19/2003.
• Review of Christopher Ricks, Reviewery, 8/4/2002.
INVITED TALKS
“How Modernism Matters: D.H. Lawrence, Fashion, and Enchanting Objects,” Oregon State
University Center for the Humanities Lecture Series, Oct. 2013
“‘their best selves’: Fashion, Fantasy, and Race in the Harlem Renaissance,” Inaugural Faculty
Colloquium Series Lecture, Ithaca College, Nov. 2011
“Hair Cuts in the Jazz Age: A Conversation about Sex, Gender, Race, and Hair in the 1920s,”
Tuesday Salon Series Presentation, Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College, Nov. 2011
“‘the connection between dress and war is not far to seek’: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of
Fashion,” English Department Sigma Tau Delta Lecture Series, Ithaca College, Nov. 2010
“Clothing and Community at the Omega Workshops,” “New Looks” Symposium, Block Museum
of Art, Northwestern University, Feb. 2009
CONFERENCE PAPERS
“D.H. Lawrence’s Transformative Trousers: Garments as Non-Human Agents” for Panel
“Modernism and the Limits of Knowledge,” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference, Sussex, UK, Sept. 2013.
“’We belt the globe’: Madam C.J. Walker and the Beauty of Activism” for Panel “Spectacles of
Modern Beauty and Culture,” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Las Vegas, NV, Oct. 2012
“Du Bois, Fauset, and the Politics of Romance” for Panel “Form and Internationalism,” Modernist
Studies Association Conference, Buffalo, NY, Oct. 2011
“‘their best selves’: Self-fashioning in the photography of James VanDerZee” for Panel, “Fashion
and Middlebrow Modernism,” PCA/ACA Conference, San Antonio, TX, Apr. 2011
“Capturing ‘the spirit of the age’: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fashionable Designs” for Panel,“Celebrity,
Embodiment and Modern Authorship,” Modernist Studies Association Conference,
Victoria, B.C, Nov. 2010
“‘for ever and ever she will make my clothes’: Virginia Woolf and Dressmaking at the Omega” for
Panel, “Bloomsbury and Fashion II,” Virginia Woolf Annual Conference, New York, NY, June 2009
“Modes of Modernism: Vanessa Bell and Dress Design” for Panel, “Fashion, Gender, and
Modernity,” Canadian Women’s Studies Association Conference, Ottawa, ON. May 2009
“Refashioning Aesthetics in the Harlem Renaissance” for Seminar on “On the Boarders of
Aesthetics,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, Mar.
2009
“The Provocation of Style: Fashion in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset” on Panel, “Women
Transforming Modernism,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference,
Boston, MA Feb. 2009
“Transnational Fashion and Multiple Modernities in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love” for Panel,
“Transnational Fashion and National Modernities, Modernist Studies Association Conference, Nashville, TN, Nov. 2008
“Fashioning the New Negro Woman: The Aesthetics and Politics of Dress in the Crisis and
Nella Larsen’s Quicksand” for Panel, “Fashion and Aesthetics,” Rocky Mountain Modern
Language Association Conference, Reno, NV, Oct. 2008
“Fashioning ‘Modern Fiction’: Woolf’s Revisions Re-examined” for Panel, “Editorial Revision,”
Virginia Woolf Annual Conference, Denver, CO, June 2008
“A Flâneuse on Oxford Street” for Panel, “Flânerie,” Literary London Conference, London, UK,
July 2004
PANEL, SEMINAR, AND ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPATION AND ORGANIZATION
Presenter, Roundtable: “Empowering (Academic) Encounters: Creating Community Across
Differences in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,” National Women’s Studies
Association, Cincinnati, OH, Nov. 2013
Organizer, Panel: “Modernism and the Limits of Knowledge,” Modernist Studies Association
Conference, Sussex, UK, Sept. 2013
Co-leader and organizer, Seminar: “Modernism and Pleasure,” Modernist Studies Association
Conference, Buffalo, NY, Oct. 2011
Participant, Seminar: “The Modernism-Fashion Nexus,” Modernist Studies Association
Conference, Victoria, B.C, Nov. 2010
Presenter, Paper: “Jessie Fauset’s ‘Criteria of Negro Art’: Fashion, Fantasy, and Racial Politics” on
Rountable: “Discipline and Disruption: Ethnic Literature in the 21st-century,” Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, Dec. 2009
Organizer and Chair, Panel: “Bloomsbury and Fashion II,” Virginia Woolf Annual Conference,
New York, NY June 2009
Participant, Seminar: “Remapping the Harlem Renaissance,” Modernist Studies Association
Conference, Nashville, TN, Nov. 2008
Co-Organizer, Panel: “Transnational Fashions and National Modernities,” Modernist Studies
Association, Nashville, TN, Nov. 2008
Organizer and Chair, Panel: “Fashion and Aesthetics,” Rocky Mountain MLA Conference, Reno,
NV, Oct. 2008
COURSES TAUGHT
Oregon State University:
English 106, Introduction to Poetry
English 221, African American Literature
English 362, American Women Writers
Women Studies 499/599, Topics: Fashion, Gender, Modernity
Ithaca College:
English 460, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group
English 390, Fashion and Fiction in the Twentieth Century
English 382, Networks and Communities of Transatlantic Modernism
English 201, Approaches to Literary Study
English 113, Introduction to Poetry
ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
University Service
Member, Scholarship and Awards Committee, School of Writing Liteature, and Film, OSU, 2014
Member, Personnel Committee, Search for Assistant Professor of American Literature with a focus
on Latino/a Literature, School of Writing, Literature, and Film, OSU, 2014
Faculty Advisor, English Students Association, OSU, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014
Member, Search Committee for the Director for the School of Writing, Literature, and Film,
OSU, 2013
Member of the Curriculum Committee, Department of English, Ithaca College, 2011-2012
Member of the Steering Committee, Women’s Studies Program, Ithaca College, 2011-2012
National
Outside Reviewer for: Cornell University Press, Nautilus Journal, National Conference for Undergraduate Research
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
Modern Language Association, Modernist Studies Association, National Women Studies Association