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Pamela Regis

I am an Early Americanist with one foot in British Literature via my work on popular romance fiction and the courtship novel. I have taught English courses from 1984 through 2018, including Literary Methods for beginning English majors, the Senior Seminar in which English majors write their senior theses, American Lit I: Liberty and Slavery, and the Austen course. I am also a composition teacher, passionate about the power that knowing how to write has on students' thinking and on their careers.

More recently I have served as Interim Dean of the Faculty and, currently, Acting Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies.

Education

1988
Ph.D. in English, Johns Hopkins University
1976
M.A. in English, Johns Hopkins University
1974
B.A. in English, Johns Hopkins University

Research Interests

  • The form and history of popular romance fiction from the eighteenth-century to the present

  • Early American literature

  • Austen

  • The lyric

Recent Courses

  • ENG 3362: Austen

  • ENG 2241: American Literature I: Liberty and Slavery

  • ENG 2272: Popular Romance Fiction

Selected Publications

  • "A Natural History of the Romance Novel." U Penn Press, 2003.

  • Describing Early America: The Rhetoric of Natural History. In Bartram, Jefferson, and Crevecoeur, U Penn Press, 1999.

  • Pamela Crosses the Atlantic. In Romance Fiction and American Culture. Eds. Eric Murphy Selinger and William Gleason. Ashgate, 2016.

  • Female Genre Fiction in the 20th Century. In The Cambridge History of the American Novel, ed., Lenny Cassuto, Clare Eby, Ben Reiss. Cambridge U P, 2011.

  • Vows in Mansfield Park: The Promises of Courtship. Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 28 (2006): 166-175.

Pamela Regis