Faculty Profile
Claire Seiler
(she/her/hers)Associate Professor of English (2010)
Contact Information
East College Room 305
717.245.1921
Bio
Seiler's research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary US, British, and Irish literature, poetry and poetics, and the history of literacy. She is the author of Midcentury Suspension: Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II (Columbia UP, 2020) and of articles and book chapters published in Contemporary Literature, Modernism/modernity, Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Rights (2016), Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive (2020), and elsewhere. Her new project focuses on literature and public health in the modernist period. Recent courses include: Celtic Revival/Harlem Renaissance; War, Race, and US Literature since 1945; and Women Write War. She is contributing faculty in American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Education
- B.A., Middlebury College, 2002
- M.Phil., Trinity College, Dublin, 2004
- Ph.D., Stanford University, 2010
Awards
- Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching, 2018-19
2021-2022 Academic Year
Fall 2021
ENGL 101 Women Write War
Cross-listed with WGSS 101-01.
This course studies American women’s war writing from the US Civil War through the “war on terror.” We will ask: what literary forms have women writers adapted or developed to represent war, as well as the social, political, bodily, and emotional effects of armed conflict? How has women’s war writing participated in debates about feminism, gender identity, citizenship, civil and human rights, and the American project? How have women’s lived experiences and changing social roles impacted the diverse genre of war writing—and vice versa? Primary texts include works of poetry, fiction, and autobiography by writers including Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Elyse Fenton, Frances E.W. Harper, Toni Morrison, Toyo Suyemoto, and Natasha Trethewey.
WGSS 101 Women Write War
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-04.
This course studies American women’s war writing from the US Civil War through the “war on terror.” We will ask: what literary forms have women writers adapted or developed to represent war, as well as the social, political, bodily, and emotional effects of armed conflict? How has women’s war writing participated in debates about feminism, gender identity, citizenship, civil and human rights, and the American project? How have women’s lived experiences and changing social roles impacted the diverse genre of war writing—and vice versa? Primary texts include works of poetry, fiction, and autobiography by writers including Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Elyse Fenton, Frances E.W. Harper, Toni Morrison, Toyo Suyemoto, and Natasha Trethewey.
ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.
