Biography:
Elisabeth Ceppi has taught in the English department at PSU since 2000. Her research focuses on early American representations of unfreedom and what they reveal about how concepts of liberty, authority, and obedience entwine with hierarchies of gender, race, and class. She is currently working on an essay about scientific race management in a little-studied (perhaps justly!) mid-19th c. novel set in the Oregon Territory. In her classes, she helps students navigate their encounters with a body of historical literature that often seems quite remote from their interests and values. The aspects of these works that students find most surprising, vexing, and challenging provide great material for thinking through the relationship between literature and history, and for examining whether and how America’s past remains relevant to understanding its present.
Courses:
- ENG 253 Survey of American Literature I
- ENG 360U American Literature and Culture I
- ENG 460 Topics in Early American Literature
- ENG 428 Canons and Canonicity
- WR 301 Critical Writing in English
Publications:
- Invisible Masters: Gender, Race, and the Economy of Service in Early New England (Dartmouth College Press, 2018).
- "Invisible Labor: Puritan Servitude and the Demonic Possession of Elizabeth Knapp." American Literature 78:2 (June 2006): 263-292
- “‘Come When You Are Called’: Racialized Servitude and the Division of Puritan Labor." Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 16:2 (Spring 2005): 213-231.
- “In the Apostle’s Words: Elizabeth Ashbridge’s Epistle to the Goshen Monthly Meeting." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 21:2 (2004): 141-155.