USC.edu

Margaret Russett

Professor of English
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email russett@usc.edu Office THH 435 Office Phone (213) 740-3749

Research & Practice Areas

Romantic literature, aesthetics, Gothic fiction, canon-formation, literary transmission

Biography

I’m now in my third term as Chair of the English Department, so either I’m doing something right or my colleagues aren’t paying attention.  When not composing memos (a collected edition will be issued posthumously) I teach everything from the classics—in USC’s Thematic Option program and a GE class on “Pity and Fear”—to contemporary fiction.  At the core of my teaching and writing is the phenomenon of Romanticism, which I understand as both a historical period and an ethos.  I regularly teach the department’s upper-division Romanticism survey, as well as more specialized courses on writer/painters, the gothic novel, and the afterlives of Paradise Lost.

              Earlier in my career I published two books, both with Cambridge University Press, on Thomas De Quincey (a/k/a “The Opium Eater”) and Romantic literary forgeries.  These days I focus more on articles and essays, preferring the compression of the form.  Recent publications have included an article on De Quincey and virtual reality (“Suspended Life”), dreams and the essay (“Forms of Thought”), Romantic metrics as both medium and message (“Fascinating Rhythm”), Coleridgean traumas (“Gothic Coleridge, Ballad Coleridge”) and Mary Baker, a/k/a “Princess Caraboo” (“Self-Made Woman”). You can find a diverting introduction to the Princess on the podcast “Criminal”

https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-185-the-princess-3-25-2/

Funnily enough, my most-cited article is way out of field, on my colleague Percival Everett (“Race Under Erasure”). I am sporadically at work on a mixed-genre (memoir, criticism, cultural history…) book called “The Stoniness of the Stone.”  If you have to ask, brush up your Shklovsky.  Start quoting him now.

Some recent publications:

“Self-Made Woman.”  683-701 in Julie Carlson, ed., The Cambridge History of Women and British Romanticism.  Cambridge University Press, 2027.

“Forms of Thought:  Dreams, Reverie, and the Essay.”  260-74 in Denise Gigante and Jason Childs, eds., The Cambridge  Companion to the British Essay.  Cambridge University Press, 2024.

“Suspended Life,” The Coleridge Bulletin 62 (winter 2023): 1-16.

“Returning to the Biographia Literaria.”  The Wordsworth Circle 54:2 (spring 2023):  19-37.

“Gothic Coleridge, Ballad Coleridge.”  80-95 in Tim Fulford, ed., The New Cambridge Companion to Coleridfge.  Cambridge University Press, 2023.

“Refraction, Reflection, Revolution:  The ‘Colouring of Imagination,’” The Wordsworth Circle 51.3 (summer 2020):  259-280.

“Fascinating Rhythm,” Essays in Romanticism 25.1.4 (Winter 2018):  31-45.

“Language Strange:  The Romantic Scene of Instruction in 21st Century Turkey,” PMLA 133.4 (Oct. 2018):  1191-1206.

“To View Fair Melrose Aright,” The Bottle Imp 2017.

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2016/04/to-view-fair-melrose-aright/

 

Education

  • Ph.D. British Literature, The Johns Hopkins University, 1/1992

  • Tenure Track Appointments

    • Professor of English, University of Southern California, 02/2006 –
    • Associate Professor, University of Southern California, 01/01/1996 –
    • Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, 01/01/1990 – 01/01/1996

    Visiting and Temporary Appointments

    • M.A. Faculty, Bread Loaf School of English, 06/2006 – 07/2006
    • Visiting Professor, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Spring 2006
    • Fulbright Senior Lecturer, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Spring 2002

  • Summary Statement of Research Interests

    My research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, with emphases on Romanticism and the gothic tradition. I am particularly interested in questions of authorship, authority, and canon-formation. My first book addressed the Romantic canon by way of its “minor” player Thomas De Quincey; my second book considered the problem of authenticity through the lens of literary forgery and imposture. My current project approaches problems of Romantic aesthetics and pedagogy in the contexts of media studies, translation theory, and foreign-language study. I also write essays on contemporary fiction, considered in terms of its Romantic legacies, and maintain a secondary interest in Anglo-Turkish literary relations.

    Research Keywords

    romanticism, critical theory, the gothic novel, eighteenth and nineteenth-century, Turkey

    Research Specialties

    Romantic literature, aesthetics, Gothic fiction, canon-formation, literary transmission

  • Contracts and Grants Awarded

    • INTELLECTUAL EXCHANGE AND SUMMER INSTITUTE, (CIES Fulbright Alumni Initiative Awards Grant), Margaret Russett, $21,000, 06/01/2003 – 07/31/2005
    • Literature and Abstraction in Nineteenth-Century Britain, (John Simon Guggenheim Foundation), Margaret Russett, $35,000, 2001-2002
    • Fulbright Senior Lectureship, (Council for the International Exchange of Scholars), Margaret Russett, $12,000, Spring 2002

  • Book

    • Russett, M. (2006). Fictions and Fakes: Forging Romantic Authenticity, 1760-1845. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    • Russett, M. E. (1997). De Quincey’s Romanticism: Canonical Minority and the Forms of Transmission, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Book Chapters

    • Russett, M. (2010). Genuity or Ingenuity? Invented Tradition and the Scottish Talent. pp. 31-57. Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Russett, M. E. (2005). Three Faces of Ruth Rendell: Feminism, Popular Fiction, and the Question of Genre. pp. p. 143-65.
    • Russett, M. E. (2005). The Knocking at the Gate: Shakespeare, Regicide, and Romantic Theatricality. pp. p. 386-95. Bogazici University Press.

    Journal Article

    • Russett, M. (2007). Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century. SEL. Vol. 47 (4), pp. 943-98.
    • Russett, M. E. (2005). Race Under Erasure. Callaloo/Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. p. 358-68.
    • Russett, M. (2003). Meter, Identity, Voice: Untranslating “Christabel”. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900/Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. p. 773-97.
    • Russett, M., Dane, J. A. (2002). ‘Everlastinge to Posterytie’: Chatterton’s Spirited Youth. MLQ.
    • Russett, M. E. (1998). Narrative as Enchantment in The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1998.
    • Russett, M. E. (1995). The ‘Caraboo’ Hoax: Romantic Woman as Mirror and Mirage, Discourse, Winter 1994-5. Discourse.
    • Russett, M. E. (1991). Wordsworth’s Gothic Interpreter: De Quincey Personifies “We Are Seven”. Studies in Romanticism/International Society for the Classical Tradition, Boston University. pp. p. 345-65.
    • Documentary Interview Subject, Appear in Learning Channel Documentary on “Wuthering Heights,” dir. Rick King, 2001-2002
    • Documentary Interview Subject, Appear in Discovery Channel Documentary on “Impostors,” dir. Jay Miracle, 2001-2002
    • Video Game Content Consultant, Content Consultant on “Modern Prometheus,” an interactive game in development., 2005-2006
    • Who’s Who Among American Women, 2004 –
    • USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award, Best Book in the Humanities, 2007-2008
    • Fulbright Award, Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Awards Grant, 2003 – 2005
    • Monroe Kirk Spears Award by Studies in English Literature for “Meter, Identity, Voice: Untranslating Christabel, 2003
    • Fulbright Award, Senior Lectureship at Bogazici University, Istanbul, 2002
    • Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient, 2001 – 2002
    • USC Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Award, 1992

  • Administrative Appointments

    • Chair, 08/16/2008 – 08/15/2011

    Committees

    • Member, Modern Language Association Executive Committee, Division on English Romanticism, 2014 – 2019

  • Professional Memberships

    • American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2005 –
    • Poetics and Linguistics Association, 2003 – 2005
USC Dornsife faculty and staff may update profiles via MyDornsife.