Weyler, Karen A. 1966–

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Weyler, Karen A. 1966–

(Karen Ann Weyler)

PERSONAL:

Born December 11, 1966, in Louisville, KY. Education: Centre College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1988; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A., 1990, Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office— Department of English, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170; fax: 336-334-3281. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, senior fellow, 1995-96; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, visiting assistant professor, 1996-99; University of North Carolina at Greensboro, assistant professor, 1999-2005, associate professor, 2005-07.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Stephen Botein fellowship in the history of the book, American Antiquarian Society, 1995-96; William Reese Company fellow, John Carter Brown Library, 2004-05; grants from North Carolina Humanities Council, 2004, and Maine Women Writers Collection, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Intricate Relations: Sexual and Economic Desire in American Fiction, 1789-1814, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including South Atlantic Review, Studies in American Humor, Southern Quarterly, Early American Literature, Studies in Short Fiction, American Literature, and Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. Guest editor for Studies in American Humor,2004. Contributor to numerous anthologies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Karen A. Weyler is an academic who has lived and worked in North Carolina for the most of her life. She has received two degrees in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—a master's degree in 1990 and a doctorate in 1996. Her master's thesis involved issues of self-discovery in the American novelist Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and The Mother's Recompense. Her Ph.D. dissertation covered early American novels and issues of sexuality and the regulation of wealth. Upon graduation she became a visiting assistant professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After three years there, she moved to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, accepting a position of assistant professor of English. She was a 2004 William Reese Company fellow with the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. In 2005 she was made an associate professor of English.

Weyler published her first book,Intricate Relations: Sexual and Economic Desire in American Fiction, 1789-1814, in 2004. Taking themes from her dissertation, Weyler discusses certain works of fiction in the early American writing tradition and how they attempted to conservatively influence the society of their time. Catherine Kerrison, writing in the William and Mary Quarterly, remarked that "historians and literature specialists are in [Weyler's] debt for enlarging the early American literary canon with a careful analysis of previously obscure novels such as [Sally Sayward Barrell Keating] Wood's Dorval and Rebecca Rush's Kelroy, a Novel. " Reviewing the book in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, Lisa M. Vetere noted that "there are moments, however, when the close textual readings might have been more smoothly integrated into the critical context. This lack of integration deprives readers of the opportunity to situate Weyler's arguments … into past debates on her important but often contested critical stance." Nevertheless, Vetere stated that "overall, Weyler's study is informative, thoughtful, and particularly useful for its examination of lesser-known early American novelists, both male and female." Stephen Carl Arch, writing in Early American Literature, commented: " Intricate Relations is a smart book and is very much representative of our critical moment. The author understands the recent critical debates about the early American novel, nationalism, and sentimentality, and she situates her analysis among those debates with insight and verve."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September, 2005, A.D. Courtoy, review of Intricate Relations: Sexual and Economic Desire in American Fiction, 1789-1814, p. 105.

Early American Literature, fall, 2005, Stephen Carl Arch, review of Intricate Relations.

Journal of the Early Republic, winter, 2005, Robert S. Cox, review of Intricate Relations.

Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, June, 2006, Lisa M. Vetere, review of Intricate Relations, p. 200.

William and Mary Quarterly, April, 2007, Catherine Kerrison, review of Intricate Relations.