Lisa Mendelman, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of English and Digital Humanities

“I am interested in how literary and cultural studies can help us better understand the experience of living in our minded-bodies. My teaching and research examine gendered, racialized models of consciousness and corporeality in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature and transnational histories of science and affect. Rethinking these models of embodied subjectivity, I contend, is particularly urgent for populations marginalized through such definitions. ”

Biography

Lisa Mendelman is an expert in the medical and digital humanities, with a focus on gender, race, and affect in twentieth-century America. She has published widely in these areas, including her recent book, Modern Sentimentalism (Oxford UP, 2019). She frequently teaches film, visual art, and popular music as well as novels and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Professional activities

Courses Taught

Digital Humanities & Cultural Analytics
Sex & Culture
American Mental Health
Joking Matters: Humor and Modern American Fiction

Research Interests

Medical Humanities
Digital Humanities
American Literature
Critical Race, Gender, Disability, and Affect Studies

Selected Publications

Modern Sentimentalism: Affect, Irony, and Female Authorship in Interwar America, Oxford University Press, 2019. 256 pages.
“Character Defects: The Racialized Addict and Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 26, no. 4, 2019, pp. 727–52.
First author, “Sentimental Avatars: Gender Identification and Vehicles of Selfhood in Popular Media from Nineteenth-Century Novels to Modern Video Games.” With Rabindra A. Ratan, Joseph Fordham, Megan Knittel, and Oskar Milik. Games and Culture, 2019. doi.org/10.1177/1555412019879812.
“Ambivalence and Irony: Gendered Forms in Interwar America.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 4, 2015, pp. 23-52.
“Feeling Hard-Boiled: Modern Sentimentalism and Frances Newman’s The Hard-Boiled Virgin,” American Literary History, vol. 26, no. 4, 2014, pp. 693-715.

Recent Presentations/Event Appearances

“Sex and Sentiment: Writing The Emotional History of the Modern Woman.” San Francisco State University Department of English, 2020.
“Against Interpretation: Wharton, Suicidality, and Modern Mental Health.” Modern Language Association Conference, Seattle, 2020.
“Ironic Attachment: Jewish Women in Interwar American Literature and Culture.” Modern Language Association Conference, Seattle, 2020.
“Diagnosing America: Mental Health and Modern Literature, 1890-1940.” Americanist Research Colloquium, UCLA Department of English, 2019.
“Sex and Sentiment: Affect, Irony, and Female Authorship in Interwar America.” UCLA Department of English, 2019.
“Diagnosing America: Mental Health and Modern Literature, 1890-1940.” Second Book Project, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of English, 2019.
“Modernism’s Straw Men: Sentiment and the Modern Woman.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Toronto, 2019.

Awards & Honors

Harris Manchester College / Oxford University Summer Research Institute Fellowship
Digital Humanities Summer Institute Scholarship, University of Victoria
Modernist Studies Association Research Travel Award
Charles B. Emerick Teaching Award
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts / US National Science Foundation Travel Award