About Me.

Stephanie L. Hawkins is Professor of late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature and culture at the University of North Texas and former editor-in-chief of Studies in the Novel. The author of American Iconographic: National Geographic, Global Culture, and the Visual Imagination (University of Virginia Press, 2010), her scholarly work focuses on the interface between public attitudes, literary and visual representation, and institutional rhetorics. Her essays on American modernism have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Modernism/Modernity, The Henry James Review, Arizona Quarterly, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language. She has published scientific essays on William James and the history of neuroscience in Frontiers in Physiology and in an essay collection on the history of neuroscience published by Springer.

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I grew up in Carson City, Nevada, in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains, surrounded by the pungent aromas of sage and pine. My memories include hot summer days swimming in the crystal waters of Lake Tahoe and reading books from the public library, only a few blocks from home. Our family’s subscription to National Geographic prompted fantasies of traveling the world and being a writer. I attended the University of Nevada, Reno, on a scholarship and was the first in my family to earn a college degree. At Wake Forest University, I earned a Master’s degree, studying modernist poetry (Wallace Stevens and Hilda Doolittle), and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Buffalo. My teaching and writing have focused on American modernist poetry and fiction, visual culture, the history of psychology, and the neuroscience of public opinion. In 2022, while on sabbatical, I earned certification in conflict resolution, and now use my training as a mediator in a variety of contexts. This hands-on experience informs my book-in-progress, Uncivil Discourse: The Art of American Protest in which I explore conflict as a necessary catalyst for artful civic dissent.

 

When I’m not writing or teaching, I enjoy traveling, playing board games, and laughing with my son Jack, and husband, Ian Finseth, also a professor of English at the University of North Texas. My favorite non-humans are our exuberant yellow labrador, Romy, and two sweet tabby cats, Clover and Pebbles. My hobbies include sewing, gardening, and being anywhere there are woods, lakes, and mountains.