Stevenson, John A

Research

research overview

My interests center on British Literature, especially literature of the eighteenth century and the history of the novel.. I am most interested in the historical contexts of literature, and I bring that perspective to bear in all my scholarship and teaching. I am currently at work on a book tentatively titled 'Strange Case of Elizabeth Canning,' which examines the most famous criminal mystery of the eighteenth century in both literary and historical (especially legal) ways. Over the last ten years, I have presented four papers at scholarly conferences on this project, as well as a paper here on the Boulder campus sponsored by the C!8-19th Group. I have written well over 100 pages of this books and hope to finish it next summer. I have also begun work on another book on detective fiction. This complements (though is different from the Canning project): using both ifthree books published in the 20th century, I will analyze why detective fiction has become one of the most popular modes of novel writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. I hope to use a sabbatical in the spring of 2025 to make a detailed study of some of the most popular of these novels and explore the ways that the long history of the novel as a genre has absorbed this kind of fiction.

keywords

English literature, history and literature of the eighteenth century, literature and the law, literature and crime, detective fiction, the novel

Publications

selected publications

book
- The Real History of Tom Jones 2005
- The British Novel, Defoe to Austen: A Critical History 1990
chapter
- 'Alien Spirits': The Unity of Lovelace and Clarissa. 85-99. 1996
- Sterne: Comedian and Experimental Novelist. 154-180. 1994
journal article
- Fielding's mousetrap + 'Tom Jones': Hamlet, Partridge, and the '45. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. 553-571. 1997
- Utopian imagination and Eighteenth-century fiction. Criticism: a quarterly for literature and the arts. 441-443. 1997
- Black George and the Black Act. Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 355-382. 1996
- THE 'LAST MAN' - SHELLEY,M. American Book Review. 12-13. 1995
- TOM-JONES AND THE STUARTS + DYNASTIC POLITICS OF 18TH-CENTURY BRITISH ROYALTY IN THE WRITINGS OF FIELDING,HENRY. ELH: English Literary History. 571-595. 1994

Teaching

courses taught

ENGL 1290 - Crime, Policing, Detection
Primary Instructor - Fall 2021 / Fall 2023 / Fall 2024
Explores stories about crime and policing, deviance and detection, law and order. Students will learn how genres such as detective or crime fiction or police procedurals narrate anxieties about race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality. Analyzes how categories of innocence and guilt, justice and punishment, are imagined and portrayed in short stories, films, novels, and TV shows.
ENGL 2102 - Literary Analysis
Primary Instructor - Summer 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021
Students will build skills in careful, detailed reading and critical writing. Focusing on poetry, prose, and plays, the course cultivates an understanding of literary forms and genres and introduces techniques and vocabulary essential for the study of literature.
ENGL 2503 - Medieval and Renaissance
Primary Instructor - Fall 2019
Surveys groundbreaking literature from the medieval period to the late seventeenth century. Topics of discussion may include gender and embodiment, technologies of communication and discovery, and premodern notions of race or cultural identity. Students will be encouraged to read aloud, explore unfamiliar literary forms, and share their ideas and questions.
ENGL 2504 - Enlightenment and Modernity
Primary Instructor - Spring 2019 / Fall 2020
Surveys key trends and works in literature after 1660, focusing on issues such as modernity; national or colonial identities; political, economic, social, technologic and scientific revolutions; and reading and media technologies. Students will be encouraged to read aloud, explore unfamiliar literary forms, and share their ideas and questions. Formerly ENGL 2512.
ENGL 3000 - Shakespeare for Nonmajors
Primary Instructor - Spring 2020 / Summer 2020 / Summer 2021 / Spring 2022 / Summer 2022
Introduction to Shakespeare. Introduces students to 6-10 of Shakespeare's major plays. Comedies, histories, and tragedies will be studied. Some non-dramatic poetry may be included. Viewing of Shakespeare in performance is often required.

ENGL 3164 - History and Literature of Georgian Britain
Primary Instructor - Spring 2018 / Spring 2019 / Summer 2019 / Spring 2020 / Summer 2020 / Fall 2024
The Georgian era (1714-1811) was a period of staggering political, social, economic, intellectual, and artistic transformations. This course studies how literary and artistic works have shaped and responded to the tumultuous history of the eighteenth century, a period both modern and strange. Students learn how writers embraced politeness and Enlightenment values while relying on crude satires to make sense of disease outbreaks, financial bubbles and crashes, changes to marriage, industrialization, slavery, and the French Revolution.

ENGL 3204 - The Novel and its Origins
Primary Instructor - Spring 2021 / Spring 2022 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
Where do novels come from? What explains the emergence of this genre as a form invented alongside the rise of the middle classes, the spread of capitalism, the expansion of the reading public, the increasing visibility of women, and changes in print technology? What is the novel�s relationship to other literary and cultural forms? Students will learn about the rise of the modern novel in the eighteenth century and its developments throughout the nineteenth century.

ENGL 3544 - The Long Eighteenth Century: Satire, Sense, and Sentiment from Behn to Austen
Primary Instructor - Spring 2020
Examines the literature and culture of the "long eighteenth century" (1660-1815), when satire ruled, the novel rose to prominence, philosophers challenged authority, and romanticism took hold. Studies how authors used evolving forms to confront and buttress authority and ask what being human means: Is it to reason and feel? To trade and own things? To be free?

ENGL 3563 - Shakespeare in Dialogue
Primary Instructor - Fall 2022
Shakespeare has often seemed to stand apart. This course proposes instead that the full power of Shakespeare�s drama and poetry emerges in dialogue. Students will read his plays alongside those of talented contemporaries; explore the dynamic social and political contexts of his writing; ask how Shakespeare�s works can participate in modern conversations about race, sexuality, nation, and ability; or consider how �Shakespeare� is transformed by the bodies that perform, edit, or simply read his writing.

ENGL 4039 - Capstone in Literary Studies
Primary Instructor - Spring 2021
Topic varies by section, but all sections include small seminar discussions and focus on an individualized research project related to the topic. This course will draw on skills from previous courses in critical reading, thinking, and writing and will culminate in high-level discussions and in the final project. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours.

ENGL 4830 - Honors Thesis
Primary Instructor - Spring 2020 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
Students accepted to English Departmental Honors are enrolled in this course.

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Background

education and training

Ph.D., University of Virginia 1983
B.A., Duke University 1975

awards and honors

Kayden Book Award, conferred by College of Arts and Sciences, 2007
Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, conferred by Burlington Northern Foundation, 1990

VIVO

Positions

Research Areas

Research

research overview

keywords

Publications

selected publications

book

chapter

journal article

Teaching

courses taught

Background

education and training

awards and honors

International Activities

geographic focus

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