Elizabeth Evans

Elizabeth Evans

I work on British and Anglophone literature with special attention to modernism and mobility. I am the author of Threshold Modernism: New Public Women and the Literary Spaces of Imperial London (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which examines gendered identities and transitional spaces in British and colonial narratives from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s. In this book, I argue that writing of the era (from B. M. Malabari to Virginia Woolf) was shaped by widespread debates about women’s increasing public presence as workers and pleasure seekers in the city. I continue my study of gender, race, and urban space in two ongoing projects. One examines the role of urban green spaces in the work of early twentieth-century immigrants of color, particularly Markino Yoshio, a Japanese artist and writer, and the Egyptian editor, writer, and anti-imperial activist Duse Mohamed Ali. The other, carried out in partnership with the NEH-sponsored Textual Geographies project, uses computational methods to map the past two centuries of British cultural geography across a corpus of over 20,000 digitized literary texts.

I am also at work on a book about air power and aerial views in British and Anglophone writing. The invention of the airplane transformed the possibilities for communication and travel, but it also introduced new modes of warfare and imperial control. In this project, I explore how the airplane held in tension new ways of seeing others: freedom from the limitations of earth-bound, parochial perspectives and a dangerous sense of mastery derived from a view from above. I am the coeditor of Woolf and the City (2010) and have published in Modern Fiction Studies, Literature Compass, and Cultural Analytics as well as in edited collections on Amy Levy, George Gissing, and Virginia Woolf. I am Program Chair for the Modernist Studies Association, Book Review Editor of the journal The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, and I serve on the advisory committees of the Space Between Society and of the International Virginia Woolf Society.

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

• Modernist studies
• Digital humanities
• Gender studies
• Postcolonial literature and theory
• Spatial theory and cultural geography
• British and Anglophone literature

Education

• PhD, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006
• MA, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998
• BA, English, University of Puget Sound, 1995

Awards and grants

• National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Implementation Grant, “Textual Geographies.” Co-investigator, 2016-2018.
• Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, Research Grant, 2013, 2014, 2016.
• DuBois Educational Foundation, Research Development, and Teaching Development Grants, Penn State DuBois, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.
• Faculty Award for Merit and Excellence, Penn State DuBois, 2011.
• William C. Archie Award for Faculty Excellence, Wake Forest University, 2007, 2008.
• Adams Fellowship, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004.
• American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship, 2003-2004.
• University of Warwick Exchange Scholarship, International Office and Programs, Wisconsin-Madison, 2003-2004.

Selected publications

Book:

Threshold Modernism: New Public Women and the Literary Spaces of Imperial London. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Edited volume:

Woolf and the City. Coedited with Sarah Cornish. Clemson University Press, 2010.

Articles:

“Reverse Imperial Ethnography and C. L. R. James’s London Writing,” Modernism/modernity 28.2 (April 2021): 311-32.

“Nation, Ethnicity, and the Geography of London Writing, 1880-1940.” Co-authored with Matthew Wilkens. 13,000 words. Cultural Analytics (2018).

“London Calling: Una Marson in the Colonial London Scene.” Virginia Woolf and the Common(weath) Reader: Selected Papers from the Twenty-Third Annual International Woolf Conference. Eds. Helen Wussow and Mary Ann Gillies. Clemson University Digital Press, 2014. 107-14.

“Air War, Propaganda, and Woolf’s Anti-Tyranny Aesthetic.” Modern Fiction Studies 59.1 (2013): 53-82.

“Two Paths for Women’s Writing in Modernist Studies.” Special issue on “The Future of Women’s Literature in Modernist Studies.” Literature Compass 10.1 (2013): 30-37.

Courses taught by Elizabeth Evans

Winter Term 2025 (future)

• ENG2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts
• ENG5595 - Topics in Global Literatures
• GSW2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts
• GSW5400 - Topics in Gender and Women's Studies

Fall Term 2024

• ENG2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts
• ENG8008 - Seminar in Theory
• GSW2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts

Winter Term 2024

• ENG2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts
• ENG4991 - Honors Seminar
• ENG5992 - Senior Seminar
• GSW2570 - Women Writers: Writing about Texts

Fall Term 2022

• ENG3120 - English Literature after 1700
• ENG7032 - Modernism and Modernity

Winter Term 2022

• ENG2570 - Writing about Literature: Women Writers
• ENG3120 - English Literature after 1700
• ENG4991 - Honors Seminar
• ENG5992 - Senior Seminar
• GSW2570 - Writing about Literature: Women Writers