Gretchen Woertendyke
Assistant Professor
Office: 303 Humanities Office Building
(803) 777-2115
Woertend@mailbox.sc.edu
Current Curriculum Vitae
Education
Ph.D., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2007.
Specialization Areas
- Early American Literature
- Studies of the Novel
- Transatlantic Romanticism
- Postcolonial Theory
Recent Courses
See Course Descriptions for detailed information.
- ENGL 287: American Literature Survey
- ENGL 384: Realism
- ENGL 429: Special Topics: Violent Desires and Other Early Republican Anxieties
- ENGL 750: Early American Novel
Current Research Project
My current project is a book-length manuscript entitled, "Romance to Novel in Early America." In it I trace the specter of violence across the Atlantic world, and its considerable contribution to the early national romance in the Americas. I work with myriad early sources, including political legislation and pamphlets; journalism; private letters; both trial transcripts and fiction accounts of slave conspiracies; and the magazine tale. The rhetorical strategies meant to repress revolution and horrify readers become the catalyst for generic transformation in the 18th-and 19th centuries. Read in its revolutionary context, one which marks it as tacitly distinct – but not explicitly separated from – its British predecessor, this New World novel pivots on an apocalyptic future. I want to suggest that these novels betray anticipatory anxiety – anxiety that becomes visible in the transformation from romance to novel, between 1750-1860.
Works in Progress
Romance to Novel in Early America, a book-length study of the impact of Atlantic world revolutions on the transformation of genre between 1750-1860.
“Haiti and the Early American Novel.” Early America and the Haitian Revolution: Essays on the Cultural History of Atlantic Colonialism and Modernity , Ed. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael J. Drexler.
Publications
“John Howison’s New Gothic Nationalism and Transatlantic Exchange.” Early American Literature . 44, 2 (2008): 309-335.
"In the Cage.” A Critical Companion to Henry James , Eds. Eric Haralson and Kendall Johnson. Clearmark Books, New York, NY, 2008. (Forthcoming)
"Romance to Novel: A Secret History.” Narrative. Ed., Rebecca Stern. (Forthcoming Aug 2009)
Upcoming Conference Presentations
“Traveling Genres: Saint-Dominguan Violence and the American Novel.” American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), Richmond, VA: March 2009.
“Atlantic History as Literary Form; or A Secret History.” The Society of Early Americanists 6th Biennial Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda: March 2009.
“Foundation, Translation, Form.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR), “Romanticism & Modernity.” Durham, NC: May 2009.
Recent Presentations
“Violent Time.” Temporalities Panel. International Conference on Narrative. Austin, TX: May 2008.
“New Gothic Nationalism and Transatlantic Exchange.” Keats—Shelley Association. MLA Convention. Chicago, IL: December 2007.
“Insurrection Narrative and the Development of American Gothicism.” National American
Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA: May 2007.
“’The Cant of the Pickpockets’: William Cobbett and Charles Brockden Brown in 1790s.” Carolina Low Country and Atlantic World Conference. Charleston, SC: February 2007.
“From Revolution to Insurrection; or The Specter of Haiti.” American Studies Association,
Crossroads of Cultures, Washington D.C.: November 2004.
Awards
Morton E. Kahn Award, Best Dissertation, SUNY Stony Brook, 2007.