Associate Professor
English
Amy L. Blair is an associate professor of English at 向日葵视频 and is co-editor, with James Machor, of the journal Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, the official journal of the Reception Study Society. Dr. Blair's 2012 book Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States, was published by Temple University Press under the auspices of the Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded American Literatures Initiative. Reading Up investigates, through the lens of a reading advice column that ran for the decade between 1902 and 1912 in the Ladies' Home Journal magazine, the way readerly desires for social, cultural, and financial capital affected readers' reception of the canonical works of American literary realism and the less-celebrated, genteel literary bestselling fiction of the day. Dr. Blair's work in progress, Tasting and Testing Books, studies Emily Newell Blair鈥檚 reading advice in Good Housekeeping magazine during the 1920s and 1930s in the frame of the magazine鈥檚鈥渕oney-back guarantee鈥� mindset. Dr. Blair has also been named volume editor for The Gods Arrive in The Complete Works of Edith Wharton, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Courses Taught
- American Literature
- Women's Studies
- Literature and Popular Culture
Research Interests
- Late 19th and Early 20th-century American Literature
- Early and New Republic-Era American Literature
- History of the Book
- Reception Studies
- History of American Periodicals
- Class and Gender Studies
Publications
- "Tasting and Testing Books: Good Housekeeping鈥檚 Literary Canon for the 1920s and 1930s.鈥� REAL -Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 31 (2015): 167-83.
- "American Readers and Their Novels.鈥� Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 6: The American Novel 1879-1940. Eds. Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott. New York: Oxford UP, 2014.
- Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century, Temple University Press, 2012
- 鈥淢ain Street Reading Main Street.鈥� New Directions in American Reception Study. Eds. Philip Goldberg and James Machor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
- 鈥淩esearch Strategies on Women, Popular Culture, and Family Life in America, 1800-1920: Making Use of the Periodicals from the Everyday Life and Women in America Collection.鈥� Everyday Life and Women in America. London: Adam Matthew Publications, 2006.
- 鈥淢isreading The House of Mirth.鈥� American Literature 76:1 (2004): 149-175.
- 鈥淩ewriting Heroines: Ruth Todd鈥檚 鈥楩lorence Grey,鈥� Society Pages, and the Rhetorics of Success.鈥� Studies in American Fiction 30:1 (2002): 103-128.
Honors and Awards
- National Humanities Center Summer Institute participant, 2005
- Summer Faculty Fellowship, 向日葵视频, 2004, 2005, 2006
- Regular Research Grant, 向日葵视频, 2006
- Faculty Development Grant, Graduate School, 向日葵视频 (For travel to the Material Cultures Conference at the Center for the Book, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, July 2005)
- Faculty hall-STAR Award, Residence Hall Honor Society, 2004 and 2007
Additional Information
Office Hours
Fall 2024
Teaching Schedule
Fall 2024
- 4615/101 MWF 9:00-9:50 Lalumiere Hall 198
- Text in Context: Angels in America
- 4997/101 MWF 10:00-10:50 Lalumiere Hall 198
- Capstone: The Researched Passion Project
Dr. Amy Blair向日葵视频
