Amy Blair

Dr. Amy Blair is an Associate Professor of English at Marquette University and co-editor of the journal Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History. She specializes in late 19th- and early 20th-century American literature, reception studies, and the history of print culture. Her research explores how middle-class readers engaged with canonical and popular texts through advice columns in magazines like Good Housekeeping and Ladies' Home Journal. Blair has authored two books: Reading Up (2012) and the upcoming Tasting and Testing Books (2024), which investigate literary reception and consumerism. She has received multiple grants and awards from Marquette University and the National Humanities Center.

Her teaching focuses on American literature, material cultures, and gender studies, with courses like Moby Dick and Material Cultures: The Midwest. She currently serves as volume editor for The Gods Arrive in the Complete Works of Edith Wharton for Oxford University Press. Blair's work bridges historical literary analysis with modern interdisciplinary methods, emphasizing the role of readers in shaping cultural narratives.

Awards:

• National Humanities Center Summer Institute (2005)
• Multiple Marquette University Faculty Fellowships (2004–2006)
• Faculty hall-STAR Award (2004, 2007)

Her research trends emphasize magazine studies, middlebrow culture, and gendered reader agency, with recent work expanding into digital humanities frameworks for studying contemporary reading behaviors.