Mariam Wassif

Mariam Wassif is an Assistant Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research bridges rhetoric, race, and material culture in the long 18th century and Romanticism, contextualizing literary style within global transformations like capitalism and slavery. She is currently completing her book Poisoned Vestments: Rhetoric and Material Culture in Britain and France, 1660–1820, which examines how writers reimagined classical tropes amid chaos and revolution.

• Education: PhD from Cornell University (2018), BA from the University of Georgia.
• Public Engagement: Communications Director for the Keats-Shelley Association of America and co-administrator of the Woman of Colour anti-racist pedagogy group.

Her scholarship highlights intersections between ancient rhetoric and modern commercial ideologies, analyzing authors like Milton, Austen, Wordsworth, and Phillis Wheatley Peters. While her recent articles focus on Romantic-era texts, feminist frameworks, and anti-racist pedagogy, her work consistently interrogates the limits of Western critiques of empire and capitalism. She has taught at institutions including the ENS de Lyon and University of Paris 1–Panthéon-Sorbonne, offering courses on Romanticism, Gothic literature, and postcolonial themes.