Dr. Kathleen Alves - English
Education
B.A. Forensic Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 2005.
M.A. English, St. John's University, New York, 2007.
D.A. English, St. John's University, New York, 2011.
Courses Taught
ENGL 101, ENGL 102, ENGL 214, ENGL 201, ENGL 231
Scholarship
My research and teaching interests include British 18th-century literature and culture, the novel, sexuality and gender studies, history of the book and reading, and history of medical writing.
Book-in-Progress
Body Language: Medicine and the Eighteenth-Century Comic Novel (Bucknell University Press) offers an interdisciplinary approach in examining the intersections of British eighteenth-century comic fiction and medical discourse, arguing that a range of political and social anxieties centered on women’s sexuality are problematized within and expressed through the body. Through the comic representations of “leaky” female physical, psychological, and emotional embodiment, novels authored by Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, and Charlotte Lennox put into question the efficacy of marriage as a cure for women’s biological and cultural ailments. The medical belief that women are incapable of bodily self-regulation paradoxically becomes an imperative for policing of women’s bodies and highlights the enduring shortcomings of patriarchal systems in maintaining absolute authority. By examining women’s sexuality through the medical lens and in the comic mode, Alves argues that these comic representations offer a counternarrative of women’s embodiment, agency, and selfhood, as well as exposing masculine anxieties regarding the capacity of the institution of marriage to regulate women’s sexuality.
Most Recent Publications
Co-authored essay with Danielle Spratt, 14
“Science and Medicine,” The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Volume 31, Issue 1, 2023, Pages 259–282, https://doi.org/10.1093/ywcct/mbad017
"The Long Eighteenth Century Does Not Support an Anti-Abortion Argument." Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 35 no. 3, 2023, p. 401-403. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/901860.
Review Essay, Fixing Women: The Birth of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Britain and America, by Marcia D. Nichols, and: Baptism through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire ed. by Martha Few, Zeb Tortorici, and Adam Warren. Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 56 no. 4, 2023, p. 624-627. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ecs.2023.a900663.
“Introduction: Scholarship in a Time of Crisis.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 62, nos. 3-4/Fall-winter 2023).
"Rebuilding Eighteenth-Century Studies as a Relational Ecology." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 52, 2023, p. 29-33. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/sec.2023.0003.
Review Essay, Novel Bodies: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature by Jason S. Farr; and Sight Correction: Vision and Blindness in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Chris Mounsey. Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 2021 34:1, 101-105.
"Forced Compartmentalization: Parenting, Professing, and Writing through the Age of COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Hate," ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.11: Iss.1, Article 10 (2021).
http://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.11.1.1267
“Reading and Writing to Reclaim Humanity: Centering the Ongoing History of Asian Exclusion in America in the (Digital) Age of Covid-19.” Critical Pedagogy: Teaching for Racial Inclusion in the Digital Age. Routledge, 2021.
“Invictus: Race and Emotional Labor of Nonwhite Community College Faculty.” Cowritten with Kerri-Ann Smith, Irvin Weathersby, and John Yi. Journal for Expanded Perspectives on Learning. Vol. 25 (2019-2020): 118-135.
“Whither doth this violent Passion hurry us?” Hysterical Language and Desiring Women in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.”Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 32.4 (Summer 2020): 559-578.
“Psycho (But Cute)”. The Rambling. 14 February 2019. https://the-rambling.com/2019/02/14/valentines-alves/
Grants and Awards
2023-2024: Queensborough Community College KHC-NEH Faculty Fellow
Spring 2022: Sabbatical Fellowship
2021-2022: Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Faculty Fellow
2019-2020: William P. Kelly Fellowship Award
Spring 2019: CUNY Academy William Stewart Travel Award
2018-2019: CUNY Book Completion Award
