معرفی
Allison Giffen is a Professor in the Department of English at Western Washington University (WWU). Her research focuses on 19th-century U.S. literature, with emphases on women writers, childhood studies, disability studies, and popular literature. She co-edits the Critical Childhood Studies: A Long 19C Digital Humanities Project and has co-authored multiple collections, including Jewish First Wife, Divorced and Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature. She is currently working on a monograph, Afflicted Girls and Arrested Boys: Disability, Race, and the Representation of Childhood in Post-Reconstruction America.
Her work intersects literary analysis with interdisciplinary approaches, examining themes like intersectionality, gender dynamics, and social norms. Notable publications address evangelicalism in girlhood narratives, disability in fiction, and anti-Catholicism in 19th-century novels. Giffen’s scholarship also critiques academic and social structures, such as pregnancy-related challenges in academia.
Her research consistently bridges historical contexts with contemporary critical frameworks, blending feminist, disability, and cultural studies. She collaborates widely, contributing to digital humanities initiatives and editorial projects that expand access to underrepresented voices in literary history.
