Maureen Reddy
Academic Background
B.A., M.A. Boston College;
Ph.D. University of Minnesota
Maureen T. Reddy, professor of English, serves as the coordinator of the First Year Seminar (FYS) program and is also affiliated with the Gender and Women's Studies Program. Like many people trained as Victorianists, she has wide-ranging academic interests, with teaching interests in and publications on a variety of topics, including Victorian fiction, crime novels, race theory, and Irish fiction. She is currently working on a project focused on reimagining Ireland and Irishness post-troubles and post-crash in which she examines contemporary social/political activist groups, fiction, television, and film.
On campus, Reddy has held many roles (coordinator of assessment, department chair, and program director among them) and been active on many committees, including the Committee on General Education (COGE), the committee that revised RIC's general education program, the strategic planning committee, the Central Falls Innovation Lab's early work, and the advising committee. Off-campus, she participates in several professional associations, including recently serving on the steering committee for the Association of Departments of English/Association of Departments of Foreign Languages project of considering future directions for the associations. Reddy has also chaired the Association of Departments of English's committee on best practices in assessing English programs and served as a Regional Delegate for the Modern Language Association. She is a long-time member of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities' events committee.
In her spare time, Reddy enjoys reading, especially contemporary fiction; gardening, which she took up some years ago after getting over her life-long city person's aversion to nature; and travel to just about anywhere (as long as no camping is involved), although her most frequent destination is Ireland. She and her husband have two adult children, both of whom majored in the liberal arts in college (feminist studies in literature and philosophy in their son's case and Victorian studies in their daughter's).
Courses Taught
FYS 100 First Year Seminar
FYW 100 First Year Writing (previously Writing and Rhetoric)
GEND 200 Gender and Society
ENGL 202 Introduction to Literary Study II
ENGL 206 Backgrounds in British Literature 1800-present
ENGL 262 Women, Crime, and Representation
ENGL 324 Literature by Women
ENGL 326 Studies in African American Literature
ENGL 355 British Literature from 1832 to 1900
ENGL 359 The Nineteenth-century British Novel
ENGL 434 Studies in Theory and Criticism
ENGL 460 Seminar in Major Authors and Themes
ENGL 501 Introduction to Graduate Study
ENGL 521 Topics in Cultural Studies
ENGL 522 Topics in Feminist Theory and Literature
ENGL 531 Topics in British Literature from 1660-1900
Selected Publications
Books inlcude
Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction. Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics. Rutgers University Press, 2002. Co-editor, with Bonnie TuSmith.
Everyday Acts Against Racism. Seal Press, 1996.
Crossing the Color Line: Race, Parenting, and Culture. Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Mother Journeys: Feminists Write About Mothering. Spinsters Ink, 1994. Co-editor, with Martha Roth and Amy Sheldon.
Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectivities. University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Co-editor, with Brenda O. Daly.
Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel. Ungar/Recognitions: Mystery Writers Series, Continuum Publishing, 1988.
Articles and chapters in books include
"The Uses and Abuses of Privilege." Teaching for Social Justice. Ed. Neal Lester. MLA Approaches to Teaching Series, Modern Language Association, 2020 (forthcoming).
"Troubling the Genre: Declan Burke's Harry Rigby Novels." Guilt Rules. Ed. Brian Cliff and Elizabeth Mannion. Syracuse University Press, 2019 (forthcoming).
"Teaching Crime Fiction and Gender." Teaching Crime Fiction. Ed. Charlotte Beyer. Teaching the New English Series, Palgrave MacMillan, 2018. 49-62.
"Contradictions in the Irish Hardboiled: Detective Fiction's Uneasy Portrayal of a New Ireland." New Hibernian Review 19:4 (Winter 2015), 126-140.
"Authority and Irish Cultural Memory in Faithful Place and Broken Harbor." Clues 32:1 (2014): 81-91.
"Toward a Multiracial Ireland: Black Baby's Revision of Irish Motherhood." Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland: The Immigrant in Contemporary Irish Literature. Ed. Pilar Villar-Argaiz. Manchester University Press, 2014. 217-229.
"Race and Irish Cultural Memory." Memory Ireland Vol. II. Ed. Oona Frawley. Syracuse University Press, 2012. 61-74.
"Race and American Crime Fiction." Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction. Ed. Catherine Nickerson. Cambridge University Press, 2010. 135-147.
"Representing Travellers." Affecting Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity Within and Beyond the Nation. Ed. James P. Byrne, Padraig Kirwan, and Michael O'Sullivan. Peter Lang, 2009. 145-157.
"Talking the Talk: Codes of Racialization." Facing the Other. Ed. Borbala Farago and Moynagh Sullivan. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. 232-244.
"Imagining the Margins: Muller's Explorations of Race." Marcia Muller and the Female Private Eye: Essays on the Novels that Defined a Subgenre. Ed. Alexander N. Howe and Christine A. Jackson. McFarland, 2008. 39-49.
"Reading and Writing Race in Ireland: Roddy Doyle and Metro Eireann." Irish University Review 35:2 (2005): 374-388. Rptd. Irish Postmodernism and Popular Culture. Ed. Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan. Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. 15-25.
"Teaching Wuthering Heights Intertextually: The Example of Here on Earth." Approaches to Teaching Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Ed. Terri Hasseler and Sue Lonoff. Modern Language Association of America, 2006. 142-148.
"Women Detectives." Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Ed. Martin Priestman. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 191-207.
"Smashing the Rules of Racial Standing." Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics. Ed. Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen T. Reddy. Rutgers University Press, 2002. 51-61.
"The Female Detective: From Nancy Drew to Sue Grafton." Mystery and Suspense Writers. Ed. Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. Scribner's, 1998. 1047-1067.
"Invisibility/Hypervisibility: The Paradox of Normative Whiteness." Transformations 9.2 (1998) 55-64.
"Racism." The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Ed. Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marissa Navarro, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Steinem. Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 493-496.
"The Fourth R." Teaching for Social Justice. Ed. William Ayers, Jean Ann Hunt, and Therese Quinn. The New Press, 1998. 169-185
"Introduction." The Mother Knot by Jane Lazarre. Duke University Press, 1997. vii-xiv.
"Working on Redemption." Everyday Acts Against Racism. Ed. Maureen Reddy. Seal Press, 1996. 238-255.
"Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol 159: British Short Fiction Writers, 1800-1880. Ed. John R. Greenfield. Gale Research, 1995. 122-133.
"Race-ing Love." Mother Journeys: Feminists Write About Mothering. Ed. Maureen Reddy, Martha Roth, and Amy Sheldon. Spinsters Ink, 1994. 85-92.
"Maternal Reading: Lazarre and Walker." Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectivities. Ed. Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy. University of Tennessee Press, 1991. 222-238.
"The Feminist Counter-Tradition in Crime." The Cunning Craft. Ed. June Frazer and Ronald Walker. Western Illinois University Press, 1990. 174-187.
"Men, Women, and Manners in Wives and Daughters." Reading and Writing Women's Lives. Ed. Bege K. Bowers and Barbara Brothers. UMI Research Press, 1989. 67-85.
"The Tripled Plot and Center of Sula." Black American Literature Forum 22:1 (1988) 29-45.
"Gaskell's 'The Grey Woman': A Feminist Palimpsest." The Journal of Narrative Technique 15:2 (1985) 183-193.
"Female Sexuality in 'The Poor Clare': The Demon in the House." Studies in Short Fiction 21:3 (1984) 259-265.
Awards and Honors (selected)
Faculty Leadership Award, Rhode Island College, 2016
George N. Dove Award, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, 2013
Sigma Tau Delta Honor Society inductee, 2008
Mary Tucker Thorp College Professor, Rhode Island College, 2005-06
Gustavus Myers Award/Human Rights Area, for Race in the College Classroom, 2004
Reader’s Choice Award, American Educational Studies Association, for Race in the College Classroom, 2002
Koppelman Award for Excellence in Feminist Studies of Popular Culture and American Culture, Popular Culture Assoc. and American Culture Assoc., for Everyday Acts Against Racism, 1997
Minnesota Book Award, for Mother Journeys, 1995
Koppelman Award for Excellence in Feminist Studies of Popular Culture and Am
Pioneer and Trailblazer Award, Rhode Island Commission on Women, 1995
