Valerie Rohy

Valerie Rohy is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Vermont (UVM), where she has taught since 2002. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Tufts University (1997) and a B.A. from Rice University (1988). Prior to UVM, she taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Her research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century American literature, queer theory, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic theory. She has published essays on authors such as James Weldon Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, Alison Bechdel, and Pauline Hopkins, emphasizing intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

• Teaches courses including Queer Literature and Criticism, Sexuality and Gender in 19th-Century America, and A Queer Decade: Literature, Theory, and Film since 2000.
• Recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 University Scholar Award (UVM) and the 2012 Twentieth-Century Literature Andrew J. Kappel Prize.
• Active in LGBTQ+ advocacy, having received multiple LGBTQA Faculty Leadership Awards (2004, 2009) and the Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award (2006).

Her work bridges literary analysis with critical theory, particularly interrogating how marginalized identities are constructed through narrative and cultural texts.