Devoney Looser

Looser was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on April 11, 1967,[1] and raised in White Bear Lake, Minnesota,[2] where her mother first introduced her to Jane Austen's work.[3] Looser attended and graduated from Hill-Murray School in Maplewood, Minnesota in 1985.[4]

As a first-generation college student, Looser received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Augsburg College in 1989 and later earned her doctorate in English with a certification in women's studies from Stony Brook University.[5]

After teaching at Indiana State University, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Louisiana State University, and the University of Missouri, Looser accepted a faculty appointment at Arizona State University in 2013.[5]

In 2018, Looser was appointed a Foundation Professor of English for her outstanding faculty accomplishments.[6] In 2020, she was named a Regents Professor, the highest faculty honor awarded at Arizona State University.[7]

She has played roller derby as Stone Cold Jane Austen.[8]

Her first book was British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820, which examined British women writers and their contributions to historiography.[9] She followed this up with Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850 in 2008.[10]

In 2017, Looser published her third book, titled The Making of Jane Austen. This book focused on how Austen's popular influencers shaped her reputation, including as "a transnational figure used in support of women's suffrage."[11] Publishers Weekly named The Making of Jane Austen a Best Summer Book (Non-Fiction) [12] and a Top 10 Forthcoming Title in Literary Criticism.[13]

Looser's essays and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, and The TLS. In 2019, Looser brought back into view a forgotten fictional pen portrait of Austen published in an 1823 issue of The Lady's Magazine.[14] In 2021, she published discoveries about the Austen family's complicated relationship to slavery and anti-slavery, which revealed the previously unknown fact that Jane Austen's brother, Henry Thomas Austen, had been a delegate to an Anti-Slavery Convention.[15]

Looser with Kevin Sandler and Whit Stillman after a screening of his 1990 film Metropolitan.

Her lectures on Jane Austen for The Great Courses came out in 2021.[16]

Looser's biography Sister Novelists: Jane and Anna Maria Porter in the Age of Austen is scheduled for publication in September 2022 by Bloomsbury.[17]

In 2018, Looser was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award to research the sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter.[18]

• Looser, Devoney, ed. (1995). Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Looser, Devoney, ed. (1997). Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Looser, Devoney (2001). British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Looser, Devoney (2008). Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Looser, Devoney, ed. (2015). Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in the Romantic Period. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCO9781139061315. ISBN 9781139061315.
• Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Looser, Devoney, ed. (2019). Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811). New York: Penguin Random House.
• Looser, Devoney, ed. (2019). The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Looser, Devoney, ed. (2021). The Life and Works of Jane Austen. Chantilly, VA: Great Courses.
• West, Jane (2015). Devoney Looser; Melinda O'Connell; Caitlin Kelly (eds.). A Gossip's Story, and A Legendary Tale (1796). Charlottesville, VA: Valancourt Books. ISBN 9781943910151.

• Devoney Looser publications indexed by Google Scholar
• CV
• Personal website