Shannon Brennan

Shannon Brennan is an Associate Professor of English at Carthage and also serves as the Director of Writing Development. She earned her B.A. degrees in English and theater from the University of Maryland, her M.A. in English from Fordham University, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She specializes in fin-de-siécle American literature, queer theory, and cultural studies, and most recently she has been teaching in UCLA’s Writing Programs.

• B.A. — English, University of Maryland
• B.A. — Theater, University of Maryland
• M.A. — English, Fordham University
• Ph.D. — English, University of California, Santa Barbara

• ENG 3040 Advanecd Writing
• ENG 3140 Literary Genres

“I specialize in fin-de-siécle American literature, queer theory, and cultural studies. My first research project, Soft Cosmologies, examines popular, literary, and religious writing in the late 19th century (1865-1914), asking how these discourses responded to the ‘disenchantment’ that purportedly arises in modern secularism. Thinkers of the period offered what I call ‘soft cosmologies’: speculative accounts of the world that encouraged readers to combine religious and secular worldviews, instead of converting to a single one. My second research project theorizes the way that ‘queer’ design informs the utopian imagination of the late nineteenth century.”

• “Edith Wharton’s Humanimal Pity” in “The New Edith Wharton Studies,” ed. Jennifer Haytock and Laura Ratray. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020.
• “The Queer Feeling We All Know”: Queer Objects and Orientations in Edith Wharton’s (Haunted) Houses.” “Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers,” vol. 34 no. 1, 2017, p. 82-105. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/662907.