Notable Achievements

Professor and Chair of English Eileen Cleere presided over her final conference as President of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) in Genoa, Italy from June 18-21. In that capacity, Cleere ran a board meeting, planned upcoming conferences in Washington, D.C., Dallas, TX, and Rome, Italy, and introduced the keynote speaker, Professor Clair Pettitt, for a lecture held at the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace). Cleere also delivered a paper titled “The Quickening: Pregnancy and Pronatalism in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility,” and participated in a special roundtable called “Slowing Down Time: Embodied and Generational Resistances to Speed and Acceleration.” Her roundtable talk was titled “Becoming a Minor Character,” and suggested that the Victorian novel can help us understand models of institutional service generationally, with specific focus on the gendered and generational labor often required to sustain work in public facing (PH) and community facing (CEL) initiatives.

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Eileen Cleere

Professor of English

Expertise

Victorian literature and culture, the novel, film studies, feminist studies.

Dr. Eileen Cleere received her PhD from Rice University in 1996 and her BA with honors from Scripps College in 1989. 

In 2019, Cleere was appointed to the inaugural Joanne Powers Austin Term Chair in English.

  • Biography

    Dr. Eileen Cleere received her PhD from Rice University in 1996 and her BA with honors from Scripps College in 1989. 

    In 2019, Cleere was appointed to the inaugural Joanne Powers Austin Term Chair in English.

  • Research

    Currently, Cleere’s research focuses how Victorian psychological models of child development invented the concept of adolescence, and helped to innovate the genre of fiction known as Young Adult literature.

    Cleere has received multiple fellowships to aid in her research including:

    • 2009-2010: Brown Research Fellowship, Southwestern University.
    • 2006: C.P. Snow Fellowship, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
    • 2002: Sam Taylor Fellowship.
    • 2001-present: British Studies Junior Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin.
    • 2001: Yale Center for British Art Fellowship.
    • 2001: Mayers Fellowship, Huntington Library (Declined).
    • 2001: Fleur Cowles Fellowship, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
    • 2000: British Academy Fellowship.
    • 2000: Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Research and Travel.
  • Publications

    BOOKS AND BOOK PROJECTS:

    Avuncularism: Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Nineteenth-Century English Culture. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004.)

    The Sanitary Arts: Aesthetic Culture and the Victorian Cleanliness Campaigns. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014.)

    Young Adult: Slow Psychology and the Sublimation of Victorian Sensation (in progress).

     

    SELECTED ARTICLES:

    “Chaste Polygamy: Mormon Marriage and the Fantasy of Sexual Privacy in Wood’s East Lynne and Verner’s Pride. Victorian Studies (57.2) Winter 2015.

    “Tactile Consciousness: Art, Cognitive Criticism, and the (New) Degeneration Debates.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts (34.5) Winter 2012.

    “Home Trading: Domestic Economy, Political Economy, and Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife.” ELH (74.1) Spring 2007.

    “Victorian Dust Traps.” Filth: Dirt, Disgust and Modern Life. Eds. William Cohen and Ryan Johnson. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

    “Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin, Modern Painters, and the Victorian Sanitation of Fine Art.” Representations(78), Spring 2002.

  • Presentations

    Invited Lectures and Presentations:

    “Intensive Culture: Aesthetics and Purity in the Eugenic Novels of Sarah Grand.” Women’s Studies Lunch Lecture, Texas A&M University. March 2008.

    “‘Implicit Faith in the Deception’: Misanthropy, Curiosity, and Natural History.” Morning Lecture. The Dickens Universe, UC Santa Cruz..
    August 2003.

    “Sanitizing Sublimity: Romantic Art/Victorian Dirt.” Department of Art and Art History, Texas State University, January 28, 2003.

    “Sanitizing Sublimity: A Seminar.” Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Studies Group (NICE), Rice University. December 14, 2002.

    “Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin and the Victorian Sanitation of Fine Art.” British Studies Seminar, University of Texas at Austin. April 5, 2002.

    Selected Conference Papers:

    “Hyperaesthesia: Art After Ruskin.” North American Victorian Studies Association. New Haven: Nov. 14-16, 2008.

    “Brown Studies: Painting and Pestilence in Late-Victorian Fiction.” NAVSA, Charlottesville. September 2005.

    “Home Trading: Domestic Economy, Political Economy, and Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife.” Society for the Study of Narrative
    Literature, Lousiville. March 2005.

    “Victorian Dust Traps.” Modern Language Association, New York City. December 2002.

    “‘Art or Dirt’ William Morris and Late-Victorian Sanitary Aesthetics.” North American Conference on British Studies. Baltimore, November 2002.

    “Dado or Dust-Trap? Aesthetic Borders and the Late-Victorian ‘Healthy House.’” Midwest Victorian Studies Association, Chicago. April 2002.

    “Sanitizing Sublimity: Romantic Art/Victorian Dirt,” Modern Language Association, Washington D.C. December 2000.