Nancy Johnson
استاد · Eighteenth-century British literature
State University of New York at New Paltzمعرفی
Nancy Johnson, Ph.D. (McGill University), is Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Since joining SUNY New Paltz in 1998, she has progressed from Assistant Professor to full Professor, shaping the department’s curriculum and scholarly profile.
Education
- Ph.D., McGill University
Research & Teaching Interests
Johnson’s scholarship centers on Eighteenth-century British literature, particularly the novel, and the interdisciplinary field of law and literature. She investigates how legal discourse—contracts, rights, property, and trials—infuses narrative form and political imagination in the revolutionary 1790s. Her courses explore eighteenth-century fiction alongside contemporary literary theory, encouraging students to interrogate the entwined histories of gender, law, and narrative.
Publications & Scholarly Trajectory
Across more than two decades, Johnson has produced a cohesive body of work that moves from contract theory in the English Jacobin novel to the emotional jurisprudence of the Romantic era. Monographs such as Impassioned Jurisprudence (2015) and The English Jacobin Novel on Rights, Property and the Law (2004) anchor her exploration of how literature mediates legal concepts. Recent edited volumes under contract with Oxford and Cambridge University Presses—The Letters of Charles Burney, Vol. 5 and Mary Wollstonecraft in Context—extend her archival and contextual reach.
Awards & Honors
- Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010)
- Senior Warnock Fellow, Yale Boswell Editions (2003, 2004, 2006, 2009)
- Research & Creative Projects Awards, SUNY New Paltz (2000, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2012)
- Professional Development Awards, SUNY New Paltz (2002, 2010)
- Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Affirmative Action/Diversity Leave Grant (2002)
Professional Service & Affiliations
Johnson serves on key committees within SUNY New Paltz and maintains active membership in The Johnsonians, the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and The Burney Society, fostering scholarly networks that support both research and pedagogy.
