Overview
Susannah Sharpless recently received her PhD from the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University. She specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, and her research and teaching focus on oceanic studies, the environmental humanities, gender, and poetics. Her manuscript-in-progress establishes the long-overlooked presence of women in oceanic imaginaries, demonstrating how literary representations of the sea's destabilizing power connect to material and ecological histories that extend beyond the stereotypically masculine spheres of ship and port. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in J19, ESQ, and The Emily Dickinson Journal, and her teaching has been recognized with Cornell's Deanne Gebell Gitner Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants. She has also written and produced an episode of the C19 Podcast, and published poetry in Bennington Review and Jewish Currents, among others.
Research Focus
- ecocriticism
- Nineteenth-century poetry
- Poetry and poetics
- Women's literature
- African-American literature
- Maritime literature