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Anne Widmayer

Anne Widmayer

  • Professor, Arts and Humanities

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D. in English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, “Stage Space in Performance: Aphra Behn’s Dramatic Technique in Her Plays and Oroonoko”
  • M.A. in English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • B.A. with Honors in English and American Literature, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, “Reading Genre, Reading Woman: Aphra Behn’s Novel, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister” (Honors Thesis)

PRIMARY AREAS OF RESEARCH INTEREST

British Literature of the Long Eighteenth-Century, specifically the intersection of playwriting and early narrative techniques, the taboo gendered emotions of female rage and male despair, and gender-policing within fictional and autobiographical works

PRIMARY AREAS OF INSTRUCTIONAL INTEREST

  • British Literature, including British surveys, satire, drama, novel, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, culturally determined portrayals of superheroes, film adaptations, interdisciplinary theme courses (scandals, revolutions) team-taught with colleagues in history or music
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, particularly early women writers in English, the angel/whore gender roles, and LGBTQ+ studies
  • Research Writing, focusing upon how research informs creative thinking and exploration, as well as academic literary analysis

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • Gender and Emotion in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Raging Women and Crying Men, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, forthcoming November 2024.
  • Theatre and the Novel, from Behn to Fielding. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2015. SVEC 2015: 07, ISBN-13: 978-0-7294-1165-3.

Articles

  • “Charlotte Charke’s Antiheroes in The History of Henry Dumont and Charlotte Evelyn (1756).” Against Conventions: Uncommon Social Roles of Women and Men from Early Modern Times to 1945, edited by Magdaleny Gibiec, Doroty Wiśniewskiej, and Leszka Ziątkowskiego, Księgarnia Akamicka, 2018, pp. 367-80.
  • “Manipulating Reader-Actors: Eighteenth-Century Printed Harlequinades.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, vol. 29, no. 2, Winter 2014, pp. 83-104.
  • “Lady Bountiful’s Farcical Turn Through Middleton, Farquhar, Wilder and Ludwig.” Thornton Wilder: New Perspectives, edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Lincoln Konkle, Northwestern University Press, 2013, pp. 237-68.
  • “Behn’s Dramatic Techniques in Oroonoko: Characterizing the ‘Other.’” Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in Their Lives, Works, and Culture, vol. 6, 2011, pp. 47-78.
  • “Scandalous Will: or, Congreve’s Library and Female Power.” 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 17, 2008, pp. 37-55.
  • “Behn’s Rover and Renaissance Balcony Scenes.” The Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies, vol. 59, 2006, pp. 63-86.
  • “The Politics of Adapting Oroonoko.” Comparative Drama, vol. 37, no. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 189-223.

SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS

  • 2021-2022 UW-System Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, UW-Madison (competitively awarded). Worked on book manuscript, “Raging Women and Crying Men: Taboo Gendered Emotions in Eighteenth-Century Britain.”
  • NEH Summer Institute, “Music and Travel in Europe and the Americas, 1500-1800,” Newberry Library (competitively awarded). Summer 2013. Produced materials for a unit on the music of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera for an interdisciplinary course, Revolutions in Music and Literature.
  • 2011-2014 University of Wisconsin Research Network Fellow.

SELECTED INVITED TALKS AND PAPERS GIVEN AT CONFERENCES

  • “Coffee, Tea, and Women’s Anger in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” invited talk as part of UWM-Washington County’s Scholar Sip lecture series, October 2023
  • “Raging Women and Crying Men: Taboo Gendered Emotions in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” presented to the Institute for Research in the Humanities, UW-Madison, November 2021
  • “Cautionary Tales about Taboo Gendered Emotions: Medea, Odysseus, and Achilles,” presented at the 2019 Midwest Conference for British Studies conference, Chicago
  • “Self-Conscious Literary Change: Engaging the Audience in the Emerging Novel,” invited talk for a seminar at the Research Centre on the Anglophone World at Aix-Marseille University (https://britaix.hypotheses.org/), March 2019
  • “Raging Women and Crying Men: Taboo Gendered Emotions,” presented as part of a special workshop on the history of emotions at the 2018 North American Conference on British Studies, Providence, RI
  • “Charlotte Charke’s Antiheroes in The History of Henry Dumont and Charlotte Evelyn (1756),” presented at the 2017 International Conference, Against Conventions: Uncommon Social Roles of Women and Men from Early Modern Times to 1945, University of Wrocław, Poland
  • “The Science of Gendered Emotion in Delarivier Manley’s and Paul Scarron’s Works,” presented at the 2017 Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference, UC Santa Barbara, CA
  • “Raging Women and Crying Men: Performed Emotion on British and French Stages,” presented at the 2016 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference, Pittsburgh, PA
  • “Harlequin Cherokee: Audience Manipulation and Theatrical Exchange,” presented at the 2015 International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ annual conference, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
  • “Parabasis in Fielding’s Novels,” presented at the 2012 Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ annual conference, Madison, WI
  • “Punch (not Judy),” presented at the 2008 South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA
  • “Gulliver’s Grand Tour: Journeys into the Interior,” presented at the 2007 South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting in Tulsa, OK
  • “Scandalous Will: or, Congreve’s Library as Marriage Property,” presented at the 2005 Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, WI
  • “Spectacular Irony in Behn’s Rover II and The Emperor of the Moon,” presented at the 2005 South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting on St. Simon’s Island, GA
    With Peter W. Gibeau, “Musical Characterization in Thomas Southerne’s Oroonoko,” presented at the 2004 North American British Music Studies Association in Oberlin, OH
  • “Gender Feinting in Aphra Behn’s The Feign’d Curtezans: Or, A Night’s Intrigue,” presented at the 2004 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference in Oxford, UK
  • “Is the Comic Always Dramatic?: The Case of Congreve’s Incognita,” presented at the 2003 Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference in Chicago, IL
  • “Plagiarism Disguised as Adaptation: The Dramatic Case of ‘Biyi Bandele’s Oroonoko,” presented at the 2003 Women’s Writing in Britain Conference in Winchester, UK
  • “Behn’s Dramatic Techniques in Oroonoko: Sympathy and the ‘Other,’” presented at the 2003 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference

WORKS IN PROGRESS

  • “The Chevalier/ière d’Éon and Autobiographical Gendering.” Research upon the slipperiness of historical gender codes as demonstrated by the mixture of grammatical genders and gendered behaviors in La Grande Epître Historique de la Chevalière d’Eon, d’Éon’s most complete, manuscript autobiography.
  • “Mary Pix’s Ironic Use of Dramatic Techniques in The Inhumane Cardinal.” Article about how the playwright-novelist imports signature dramatic techniques within the interpolated narratives in her single novel to cast doubt upon the veracity of her characters and their emotions.