Kathleen Lubey

Kathleen Lubey is a Professor of English and Director of the University Writing Center at St. John's University, located in Queens, New York. She holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University (2005), an M.A. from SUNY Buffalo (1999), and a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Ithaca College (1997). Her research focuses on eighteenth-century British literature, sexuality/gender studies, feminist theory, and the history of pornography. She is the author of What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest since the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, 2022) and Excitable Imaginations: Eroticism and Reading in Britain, 1660-1760 (Bucknell, 2012). Her current projects include a book challenging traditional narratives about marriage in eighteenth-century literature and editorial work on Nineteenth-Century Pornography: Sources and Materials (Routledge, forthcoming).

Dr. Lubey has held research fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and institutions like the Walpole and Chawton House Libraries. She serves as Reviews Editor for Eighteenth-Century Studies and chairs the MLA’s Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century English Forum. Her work bridges academic and public scholarship, with contributions to Aeon magazine and podcast appearances discussing her research on pornography and social justice.

Her publications span peer-reviewed articles in journals such as ELH, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, as well as edited volumes and special issues. She actively engages with archival materials to recover marginalized voices and recontextualize canonical works within broader cultural and historical frameworks.