Melissa Mowry

Melissa Mowry is a Professor in the St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. John's University. Her research focuses on Restoration and early 18th-century English literature and culture, particularly how literature shaped political and social practices for non-elite members of English society. She has published extensively on writers such as Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe, as well as topics like prostitution, crime, and plebian culture.

Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Studies in English Literature, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Eighteenth-Century Studies. Dr. Mowry’s book The Bawdy Politic (Ashgate, 2004) explores the intersection of political rhetoric, pornography, and gender in late 17th-century England. She is currently working on a project titled Ties that Bind: The Hermeneutics of Collectivity and the English Literary Imagination, 1642-1748.