Deanna Kreisel

Deanna Kreisel is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English at the University of Mississippi, College of Liberal Arts. She is also Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Environmental Studies, reflecting her interdisciplinary engagement with ecological themes in literature and culture.

• Ph.D. in English, Northwestern University (1995)

Her research centers on Victorian literature and culture, with strong emphasis on gender and sexuality studies and environmentalism. She explores how narratives shape economic and ecological imaginaries, particularly in 19th-century British fiction. Her work bridges literary criticism, feminist theory, and ecocriticism, with a focus on narrative closure, utopian possibilities, and ecological mourning.

The articles and publications reflect a sustained engagement with Victorian-era texts through the lenses of gender, economics, and environmental thought. Themes include ecological utopias and apocalypses, mourning in environmental literature, and the legacy of Darwin in contemporary criticism. Her scholarship appears in leading journals such as PMLA, Victorian Studies, and Nineteenth Century Literature, and she has co-edited major volumes on post-Darwinian criticism and open ecologies.

She has co-edited significant scholarly volumes and authored the book Economic Woman: Demand, Gender, and Narrative Closure in Eliot and Hardy. Her current project examines ecological mourning and utopia, indicating a continued focus on affective and imaginative responses to environmental crisis.

Deanna Kreisel has taught a range of courses including Victorian Ecotopia and Apocalypse, Environmental Literature and the Grief Aesthetic, and Creative Criticism, demonstrating an innovative pedagogical approach that merges critical and creative practices. She advises the Environmental Studies minor and contributes to gender and sexuality studies through course instruction and interdisciplinary collaboration.

She is affiliated with the Department of English and the Environmental Studies program, contributing to both literary scholarship and interdisciplinary environmental education.