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Welcome! » Faculty & Staff » Graduate Faculty » Misty G. Anderson


Misty G. Anderson

Professor Anderson's current project extends her interest in the evolution of modern sexuality in eighteenth-century England. Enthusiastic Bodies: Religious Transformation and Sexual Danger in Eighteenth-Century England will examine representations of religious dissenters, particularly the early Methodists. The enthusiastic promise of spiritual rebirth drew on the body as both metaphor and matter. As inward transformation produced outward transformation, the remade spiritual and emotional self rewrote the experience of the body. These changes destabilized the already troubled boundaries between body and desire, sex and gender, and matter and consciousness. Portions of this study have appeared in the AMS press volume Launching Fanny Hill and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. Professor Anderson’s first book, Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Marriage on the London Stage, came out from Palgrave in 2002. She is currently on a research leave at the Yale University Libraries..

Professor Anderson teaches courses in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature as well as courses in critical theory. Recent courses include surveys of Early and Late Eighteenth-Century Literature (411 and 412), the Colloquium in Literature (376), Historicizing Sexuality, 1660-1800 (499/530), Critical Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender (486/University Studies 420), introductions to Literary Theory (576) and Feminist Theory (590), and The History of Aesthetics (479). She also coordinates the Feminist Theory and Eighteenth-Century Reading Groups and serves on the boards of The Association of Women Faculty and the local chapter of the AAUP.

Selected Publications:

Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Negotiating Marriage on the London Stage (Palgrave-St. Martin’s Global, 2002).

Representative articles

  • “Female Dramatists of the Eighteenth Century.” Cambridge Guide to British Theatre, 1730-1830. Ed. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn. Cambridge:  Cambridge UP, 2007.
  • “Baby Talk; or, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Exit.” ADE Bulletin, 138-139, Fall 2005-Spring 2006.
  • “’Our Purpose is the Same’: Whitefield, Foote, and the Crisis of Methodist Theatricality” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Vol. 34, 2005
  • "Living in a Material World: Margaret Cavendish's The Covent of Pleasure," in Senses of Touch: Discourse of Tactility, ed. Elizabeth Harvey and H.L. Meakin, introduction and afterward by Lynn Enterline, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002
  • "Mr. Barvile's Enthusiasm: Habit, Discipline, and Methodism in the Eighteenth-Century British Imagination," in Launching Fanny Hill: Critical Essays, ed. Patricia Fowler, AMS Press, 2002
  • "Tactile Places: Materializing Desire in Margaret Cavendish and Jane Barker," Textual Practice, Vol.13 (2), (1999), 329-352
  • "Frances Burney," Reader's Guide to Literature in English, ed. Mark Hawkins-Dady (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1996)
  • "Justify My Desire: Madonna and the Representation of Visual Pleasure," Gender in Popular Culture: Images of Men and Women in Literature, Visual Media, and Material Culture, ed. Susan Rollins (Cleveland: Ridgemont Press, 1995), 7-24
  • "'The Different Sorts of Friendship': Desire in Mansfield Park," Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism, ed. Devoney Looser (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995)
  • "Rehearsing the Eighteenth Century: The (Re) Production of Professional Knowledge," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 35 (1994): 86-95.

Book reviews

  • Review of Toni Bowers' The Politics of Motherhood: British Writing and Culture, 1680-1760, Prose Studies (1998)
  • Review of Terry Castle's The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny, Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1997).

Honors

  • Co-Editor, Restoration
  • Delegate to the MLA Assembly, Later Eighteenth Century
  • Arts and Sciences Junior Faculty Teaching Award, 2000
  •  John C. Hodges Excellence in Teaching Award, 1997.

Misty G. Anderson

Contact Information

Misty G. Anderson
Associate Professor and
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
304 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0430

Office: (865) 974-6934
Fax: (865) 974-6926
E-mail: manderson@utk.edu

Education

B.A., Yale University
M.A., Ph.D., Vanderbilt University

Research

The Eighteenth Century, Critical Theory, Feminist Theory and Gender Studies