Francesca J. Sawaya

Professor Francesca Sawaya "research and teaching interests focus on nineteenth-and twentieth-century American literature and culture, women's writing, and feminist criticism and literary theory. Her published work includes essays on Jane Addams, Pauline Hopkins, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Frank Norris. Her book manuscript, "Working Through Modernity: Domesticity, Professionalism, and Women's Writing", examines the ways that women from the 1890s to the 1940s combined the discourses of domesticity and professionalism in order to shape interchangeably their writings and their work. Professor Sawaya teaches classes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and in contemporary literary theory."

"Sawaya earned her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University. She has received numerous honors and distinctions, including an NEH Summer Stipend, a Portland State University Faculty Enhancement Grant, an Illinois State University Summer Research Grant, and a Clark Distinguished Teaching Award from Cornell University. She was the recipient of three Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities."

In 2006 she had a project funded by the American Council of Learned Societies that was titled "Power and Art: Patronage and Modern American Literature".


 * 2000–2001 Radcliffe Institute Fellow

Other Books

 * Modern Women, Modern Work: Domesticity, Professionalism, and American Writing, 1890–1950 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Review