Claudia L. Johnson (scholar)
Encyclopedia
Claudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University
; she is also currently chairperson of the English department. Johnson specializes in Restoration
and 18th-century British literature, with an especial focus on the novel. She is also interested in feminist theory
and gender studies
. Johnson is renowned for her books on Jane Austen
and Mary Wollstonecraft
.
Nina Auerbach
has called Equivocal Beings the "definitive account of Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, and Burney . . . It should become one of the classic feminist accounts, not just of the late eighteenth century, but of all women writers in their time" and Margaret Anne Doody writes that Jane Austen is "brilliant, witty and well-informed book . . . the best single book on Austen for a decade or more—and one of the best ever."
"She is now putting the finishing touches on a book about author-love called Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures, which traces permutations of “Jane mania” from 1817 to the present, and also working on another called Raising the Novel, which explores modern efforts to create a novelistic canon by elevating novels to keystones of high culture."
s and grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities
.
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
; she is also currently chairperson of the English department. Johnson specializes in Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
and 18th-century British literature, with an especial focus on the novel. She is also interested in feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
and gender studies
Gender studies
Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...
. Johnson is renowned for her books on Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
and Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
.
Scholarship
Johnson's major books include Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago, 1988) and Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s (Chicago, 1995). She also edited The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft (Cambridge, 2002) as well as editions of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (Norton, 1998), Sense and Sensibility (Norton, 2002), and Northanger Abbey (Oxford, 2003).Nina Auerbach
Nina Auerbach
Nina Auerbach is the John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Her special area of concentration is nineteenth-century England...
has called Equivocal Beings the "definitive account of Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, and Burney . . . It should become one of the classic feminist accounts, not just of the late eighteenth century, but of all women writers in their time" and Margaret Anne Doody writes that Jane Austen is "brilliant, witty and well-informed book . . . the best single book on Austen for a decade or more—and one of the best ever."
"She is now putting the finishing touches on a book about author-love called Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures, which traces permutations of “Jane mania” from 1817 to the present, and also working on another called Raising the Novel, which explores modern efforts to create a novelistic canon by elevating novels to keystones of high culture."
Awards
She has been awarded Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
s and grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
.