Alexander, Lynn M. 1956–

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Alexander, Lynn M. 1956–

(Lynn Mae Alexander)

PERSONAL: Born August 5, 1956, in Bemidji, MN; daughter of John W. (in U.S. Navy; later, an instructor in mathematics) and Cleo (an elementary school mathematics teacher; maiden name, Wolfe) Alexander.

Education: Phillips University, B.A., 1978; University of Tulsa, M.A., 1981, Ph.D., 1986. Religion: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

ADDRESSES: Home—119 Ramer, Martin, TN 38237. Office—Department of English, 131 Humanities, University of Tennessee at Martin, Martin, TN 38238. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Upper Iowa University, Fayette, IA, assistant professor, 1986–89; University of Tennessee at Martin, assistant professor, 1989–93, associate professor, 1993–99, professor of English, 1999–, Muriel Tomlinson Memorial lecturer, 1994, Scholarfest lecturer, 1998, department chair, 2000–. University of Keele, visiting lecturer, 1988; St. Antony's College, Oxford, member of Oxford Round Table, 2003; workshop presenter; judge of writing competitions; speaker at conferences and symposia. Weldon Public Library, member of board of trustees, 1990–99.

MEMBER: North American Victorian Studies Association, Modern Language Association of America, National Women's Studies Association, Research Society in Victorian Periodicals, Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Victorians Institute, Association of Departments of English, Midwest Victorian Studies Association, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, South Central Modern Language Association, Tennessee Philological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Sharon A. Winn) The Slaughter-house of Mammon: An Anthology of British Social-Protest Literature, Locust Hill Press (West Cornwall, CT), 1992.

Women, Work, and Representation: Needlewomen in Victorian Art and Literature, Swallow Press (Athens, OH), 2003.

John Halifax, Gentleman, Broadview Press (Orchard Park, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Keeping the Victorian House, edited by Vanessa Dickerson, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1995; and Victorian Literary Cultures: A Critical Companion to the Nineteenth-Century Novel, edited by William Baker and Kenneth Womeck, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2002. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Pre-Text, Victorian Newsletter, and Studies in the Humanities.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Subversive Sentiments: The American Social Narrative by Women, 1820–1920, with Kay B. Meyers.

SIDELIGHTS: Lynn M. Alexander told CA: "I became fascinated with the Victorian age while in graduate school. It was a time of change and contradiction (rich and poor; elaborate and simple; realism and fantasy). And nowhere did these contrasts seem greater than in Condition-of-England fiction. Imagine middle-class women writing stories about men and women working in factories that were intended for middle-and upper-class male readers.

"Joseph Kestner, one of my graduate professors and later my dissertation director, first introduced me to the potential of Victorian studies. His work on women writers and social reform sparked my interest in the representation of women in social protest fiction—why the predominance of female protagonists (and authors) and why certain professions and not others. Later, working with historian David Vincent at the University of Keele helped define the New Historical perspective my work would have. He introduced me to historical documents, working-class autobiographies in particular, that were unfamiliar and shared with me the historian's perspective (which is often different from that of the literary critic).

"I continue to be fascinated by portrayals of the working classes in Victorian England, although I am now planning on focusing on men rather than women. Much has been written about the Victorian notion of being a gentleman, but little about presentations of working-class masculinity. Such a study is complicated by the fact that writers were generally middle-class, often women, and so the presentations are not so much what the working classes thought or believed, but what the middle classes believed about the working classes. I find it tangled, but interesting.

"First I am finishing a book-length project on nineteenth-century American women writers and social protest with a colleague whose field is American literature. She was interested in the work I was doing and wanted to do something similar with American literature. Talking with her piqued my interest, and we decided to make it a joint project."