MSU scholar spotlights early modern women writers as key to future studies in book, upcoming campus presentation
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Lara Dodds, professor and head of Mississippi State's Department of English, highlights the often-overlooked literary contributions of women in the early modern period in the new book “Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Future of Literary History.”
Published in June by Oxford University Press, Dodds and coauthor Michelle Dowd, the Hudson Strode Professor of English in the University of Alabama’s Department of English, challenge traditional ideas about authorship, canon and literary value. They examine how early women’s writing—often dismissed as belated or out of step with critical trends—offers fresh opportunities to rethink literary history and teaching. The authors contend this belatedness is not a flaw but a strength that can help shape the future of literary studies.
Dodds and Dowd will present a campus talk on the book Wednesday [Sept. 17] at 4 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Library’s John Grisham Room. For more information on the event, contact MSU Department of English Associate Professor Eric Vivier at edv34@msstate.edu.
“Michelle and I frequently had conversations about how the research in our subfield, early modern women’s writing, was not recognized or integrated into literary studies as a whole,” Dodds said. “We were inspired to write this book because we thought research based on early women writers—such as Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson and Elizabeth Cary—could help all literature scholars address the big questions in the field.”
Dodds earned her bachelor’s degree in English from DePauw University and both her master’s degree and Ph.D. in English, with a focus on 17th-century literature, from Brown University. Her teaching interests include John Milton, early modern British literature, early modern women’s writing and research methods.
She is also the author of “The Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish” (Duquesne University Press, 2013) and “Milton’s Other Worlds,” part of a series in “Uncircumscribed Minds: Reading Milton Deeply” (Susquehanna University Press, 2007). Her scholarship has appeared in leading journals including Milton Studies, Early Modern Studies Journal, Restoration, English Literary Renaissance and The John Donne Journal.
For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and Department of English, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.english.msstate.edu.
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