Jacqueline Foertsch

Jacqueline Foertsch is a Professor of English at the University of North Texas (UNT) and chairs the steering committee for UNT's Postwar Faculty Colloquium. Her research focuses on post-WWII American literature and culture, with expertise in true crime narratives, civil rights literature, feminist studies, and nuclear culture in postwar America.

• Ph.D., Tulane University
• M.A., University of Iowa
• B.A., Augustana College (Rock Island, IL)

Her recent publications include Freedom's Ring: Literatures of Liberation from Civil Rights to the Second Wave (Rutgers 2021) and American Drama: In Dialogue, 1714-Present (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). She is currently working on Chariots of Doom: Getting Around to True Crime in Postwar America, extending her analysis of American cultural anxieties through literary forms.

Analysis of her 15 most recent articles reveals sustained engagement with postwar trauma narratives, including nuclear dread (The Bomb Next Door), polio epidemics (The Polio Years in Texas), and civil rights struggles. Her work often intersects race, gender, and class within Cold War and post-Cold War contexts, examining how literature reflects and challenges societal norms.

As an academic leader, Foertsch contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship through her role in the Postwar Faculty Colloquium. Her research spans true crime, feminist pedagogy, and comparative analyses of liberation movements, maintaining a critical focus on American cultural contradictions.