Member of the Month: Elizabeth Porter, Co-Chair, ASECS Women's Caucus
Interviewed by Nicole Mansfield Wright
Interviewed by Nicole Mansfield Wright
- NMW: How did you become interested in eighteenth-century studies?
EP: While I originally planned to study Victorian literature, I became hooked by the eighteenth century during my M.A. coursework. Everything I thought I knew about literary form, character, etc, was upended by reading texts like Clarissa and Tristram Shandy. During my doctoral studies, I specialized in eighteenth-century British literature, with a particular focus on literary representations of London and the perspectives of women.
NMW: What are the highlights of teaching eighteenth-century studies at a community college? Which authors, readings, and themes tend to engage students most?
EP: I'm a generalist at Hostos Community College, where I teach courses in composition, literary studies, and Women's and Gender Studies to curious and engaged students. I do end up addressing themes and texts from the long eighteenth century in each of my courses, and I may design a Special Topics course in the field in a future semester. For instance, when teaching Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, I'll often open with a discussion of the long eighteenth-century context that Audre Lorde insightfully critiques in her essay "Poetry is Not a Luxury." This lesson illustrates how the period constructed many of the discursive frames we still contend with in the U.S., such as heteropatriarchy, Cartesian dualism, anti-Blackness, and Eurocentrism. In this course, I also regularly teach Phillis Wheatley Peters and Mary Wollstonecraft as part of our discussions about gender in the Age of Revolutions and in the context of chattel slavery in the British empire. In my Literature and Composition course, I teach Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Students are always especially interested in Shelley's biography, particularly when studied alongside excerpts from her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; this context illuminates the anxieties of childbirth and mortality found in the novel.
NMW: What drew you to join the Women’s Caucus?
EP: I have found it incredibly productive and restorative to be in community with academics who support one another and share resources for scholarship and teaching. After joining the #WritewithAphra writing group in the Summer of 2020, which was organized by the journal editors of ABO, I have continued to seek out supportive academic communities like the Women's Caucus. Many of the scholars whose work I admire most and who have demonstrated such collegiality and support are members of the Women's Caucus!
NMW: What new developments/areas are you hoping to prioritize during your term?
EP: It has been wonderful to work with Misty Krueger, Nicole Aljoe, and the entire Executive Board! Together we have been working to communicate details about our wonderful prizes to members and brainstorming ideas for celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Women's Caucus. Also, we have been discussing ways to communicate and reiterate our mission and purpose to ASECS members, so that all genders, and particularly nonbinary and transgender folks, know they are welcome and valued members of the Caucus. Finally, it would be a priority for me to continue to promote mentoring opportunities in the Caucus.
NMW: Any recent developments/publications/interests, etc. you would like us to publicize?
EP: I have a forthcoming article on the urban gothic and the marriage plot in Frances Burney's Cecilia, which will appear in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 64.3-4. I'm also presenting a talk titled "Austen's London" at the May 2025 JASNA Massachusetts meeting. Finally, I'm in the early stages of a book manuscript, tentatively titled Plotting Women in the British Long Eighteenth Century. Bringing the field of women's and gender studies to bear on eighteenth-century literary studies, this book project analyzes and critiques the narrative strategies used in various eighteenth-century genres to construct specific ideas of womanhood based on race, class, and national identity.