Julie Rivkin

Julie Rivkin serves as the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of American Studies and Professor of English at Connecticut College, where she has been a distinguished faculty member since 1982. She currently holds the position of Acting Chair of the English Department and has previously provided academic leadership as Department Chair, Director of American Studies, and Associate Dean of the Faculty.

Dr. Rivkin earned both her B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, establishing the foundation for her career in literary studies. Her educational background has positioned her as a leading scholar in American literary traditions.

Professor Rivkin's research and teaching concentrate primarily on American literature from the late 19th through 21st centuries, with a secondary focus on literary theory, especially gender and queer theory. She has made significant contributions to Henry James studies through her book False Positions: The Representational Logics of Henry James Fiction (Stanford, 1996). As co-editor of the widely adopted Literary Theory: An Anthology (Wiley Blackwell, now in its third edition, 2017), she has been instrumental in making literary theory accessible in college classrooms worldwide. More recently, her scholarship has expanded to include Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, with publications in prestigious journals like PMLA, ELH, and Textual Practice. Her work demonstrates a consistent interest in intertextuality and authorial afterlives, particularly examining the queer afterlives of Henry James in contemporary writers.

Professor Rivkin has twice served as President of the Henry James Society and organized the Fourth International Conference of the Henry James Society in 2008. Her teaching portfolio reflects her research expertise through innovative courses such as The Literature of Passing, Novel Commodities, Family Stories, Cultural Histories, and Narrative Medicine, which explore intersections of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, commodification and globalization, and narrative and care.

Her current scholarly projects include a critical edition of Henry James's novel What Maisie Knew as part of the Complete Fiction of Henry James series published by Cambridge University Press, and a collection of essays on Alice Munro. Professor Rivkin maintains an active presence in her academic communities and continues to contribute significantly to the fields of American literature, literary theory, and gender studies from her office in the Blaustein Humanities Center at Connecticut College.