Dr. Melissa Mowry
Professor
B.A., Boston University
M.A., University of Delaware
Ph.D., University of Delaware
Research Focus: 18th-Century English Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Dr. Mowry has taught at St. John’s since 2001. An expert in Restoration and early eighteenth-century English literature and culture, she teaches and writes about the nuanced ways the imaginative possibilities in literature shape political and social practices, especially for non-elite members of English culture. She has published widely on writers like Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe, as well as on seventeenth and eighteenth-century prostitution, crime, violence, and plebian culture. In addition to her work on eighteenth-century Anglophone culture, Dr. Mowry also teaches and writes about the relationship between the humanities’ production of knowledge and public life. Her work has appeared in leading journals in English studies: Studies in English Literature, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, ELN (English Language Notes), Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal of British Studies and ELH(forthcoming). She has been invited to present her work both nationally and internationally.