Janet Gezari, Lucy Marsh Haskell '19 professor of English, Connecticut College

Contact Janet Gezari

Education
B.A., Cornell University; M. Phil., Ph.D., Yale University

Janet Gezari
Lucy Marsh Haskell '19 Professor of English
Department Chair

Joined Connecticut College: 1970

Specialization:
  • The English novel since Defoe
  • Victorian culture, poetry, and fiction
  • Contemporary fictions

Janet Gezari received her B.A. degree from Cornell University and her Ph. D. from Yale University and has been teaching at Connecticut College since 1970.

She regularly teaches sections of freshman English, a course in the English novel since Defoe, and courses in both Victorian and contemporary literature. Most recently, she has designed and taught a senior seminar in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie and a course titled “Twice-Told Tales” that pairs canonical English novels with novels or films that respond to them.

She was an early supporter of women's studies at the College and has served as Acting Director of Women's Studies and of Gender and Women's Studies. She was Acting Director of the program when the Fuller-Maathai chair was endowed and named. She has also co-directed the College's SATA India program.

Gezari is the editor of Emily Brontë: The Complete Poems (Penguin Press, 1991) and author of Charlotte Brontë and Defensive Conduct: the Author and the Body at Risk (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). Her book on Charlotte Brontë was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice in 1993 and jointly awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy in 1994. She has also published articles on the Brontës, George Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Bob Dylan. Her book on Emily Brontë, Last Things: Emily Brontë's Poems, was published by Oxford University Press in February 2007. She also recently re-edited Charlotte Brontë's Shirley in the Oxford World Classics series.

Gezari has received several NEH and College grants in support of her scholarship and teaching. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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