Ty, Eleanor 1958–

PERSONAL: Born 1958, in Manila, Philippines; daughter of Timothy Ty and Vicenta Lim; married David Hunter, 1982. Education: University of Toronto, B.A.; McMaster University, M.A., Ph.D. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: Swimming, cooking.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. W., Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, began as assistant professor, became professor of English and film studies, 1991–, department chair, 2004–, women's studies coordinator, 2000–03.

MEMBER: Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, Modern Language Association of America, Association of Asian American Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 1994, 2000, 2004.

WRITINGS:

Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

(Editor and author of introduction) Mary Hays, The Victim of Prejudice, Broadview Press (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada), 1994, 2nd edition, 1998.

(Editor and author of introduction) Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796–1812, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

(Editor, with Donald C. Goellnicht, and coauthor of introduction) Asian North American Identities: Beyond the Hyphen, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Eleanor Ty is known for her works in feminist literary theory, including Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. This work examines the fiction of authors Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Helen Maria Williams, Elizabeth Inchbald and Charlotte Smith in the light of both French feminist theory and theories of psychosexual development made by psychologists Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan. "Caught between the need to get approval by practicing traditional feminine qualities of silence, modesty, and submission, and the desire to participate in the masculine work of expression, the progressive novelists gathered here, in Ty's view, were unsexed and thus fit comfortably into neither position," summarized Claudia Johnson in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Johnson found that "Ty's book privileges progressive and protofeminist rather than reactionary representations of female desire, showing that country squires are just as prone to wayward libidinal excesses as sentimental heroines, and in the process enhances our understanding of the highly contested issues of writing, politics, and gender in this richly disruptive period." Jean Coates Cleary called the book a "closely argued and valuable study" in a review for Ariel, observing that it is "a thoughtful model for what one hopes will be more studies like it." Syndy McMillen Conger, writing in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, noted the strengths of Unsex'd Revolutionaries: "much thorough and intelligent discussion of neglected novels, variety … and freshness of perspective. It is almost insure to inspire first readings of many of these novels; and it fairly demands a sequel."

In Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796–1812, Ty discusses a set of women writers "more conformist" than the ones she features in Unsex'd Revolutionaries, according to Patricia Meyer Spacks, who wrote in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: "Eleanor Ty has now rescued three previously neglected women who wrote in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century."

In The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives, Ty examines the racial politics of invisibility in Asian minority culture as it is reflected through their literature, film and biographies. "Ty's vast expertise in the subject is apparent throughout the book," noted Benzi Zhang in English Studies in Canada, adding that her "capacity to present intricate arguments in plain language makes her work feel more like a dialogue with the reader than a studious exposition."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Literature, March, 2006, Crystal Parikh, review of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives.

Ariel, October, 1994, Jean Coates Cleary, review of Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s, pp. 169-171.

Choice, March, 1994, D. Landry, review of Unsex'd Revolutionaries, p. 1132.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction, July, 1994, Syndy McMillen Cogner, review of Unsex'd Revolutionaries, pp. 393-394; October, 1999, Patricia Meyer Spacks, review of Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796–1812, pp. 111-113.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, summer, 1996, Claudia Johnson, review of Unsex'd Revolutionaries, pp. 440-443.

English Studies in Canada, Volume 30, issue 4, December, 2004, Benzi Zhang, review of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives, pp. 231-235.

MSF Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 51, number 1, 2005, Angela Laflen, review of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives, pp. 201-204.