People
Profile: Megan Sweeney
Title: Associate Professor
Degree:
Ph.D., Duke University 2002
Ph.D., Duke University 2002
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Research Interests
Primary Interests
20th/21st-Century African American literature and culture; inter-American literatures; critical race studies; transnational feminist and gender studies; critical prison studies; cultural studies and ethnography.
Publications
Books:
“Reading Is My Window”: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons; University of North Carolina Press, 2010
(Winner, 2011 Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies)
(Winner, 2010 PASS Award from the National Council of Crime and Delinquency)
(Honorable Mention, 2011 Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association)
The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading; University of Illinois Press, 2012
Articles:
“‘Keepin’it real’: Incarcerated Women’s Readings of African American Urban Fiction.” From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Anouk Lang. University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
“Legal Brutality: Prisons and Punishment, the American Way,” American Literary History 22.3 (Fall 2010): 698-713.
“‘I lived that book!’: Reading Behind Bars.” Interrupted Life: The Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States. Ed. Rickie Solinger. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. 180-87.
“Reading and Reckoning in a Women’s Prison.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 50.3 (2008): 304-328. Special Issue on Detention. Ed. Phillip Barrish.
“Books as Bombs: Incendiary Reading Practices in Women’s Prisons.” PMLA 123.3 (May 2008): 666-672.
“Beard v. Banks: Deprivation as Rehabilitation.” PMLA 122.3 (May 2007): 779-783.
“‘Something Rogue’: Commensurability, Commodification, Crime, and Justice in Toni Morrison’s Later Fiction.” Modern Fiction Studies52.2 (Summer 2006): 440-469.
“Prison Narratives, Narrative Prisons: Incarcerated Women Reading Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man.” After the Pain: Critical Essays on Gayl Jones, Ed. Fiona Mills and Keith Mitchell, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. 173-202.
“Prison Narratives, Narrative Prisons: Incarcerated Women Reading Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man.” Feminist Studies 30.2 (Summer 2004): 456-482.
(winner of 2003 Feminist Studies Award)
“Racial House, Big House, Home: Contemporary Abolitionism in Toni Morrison’s Paradise.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 4.2 (Spring 2004): 36-63.
“Living to Read True Crime: Theorizations from Prison.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 25.1-2 (Winter/Spring 2003): 55-89.
“Provocations and Possibilities: Rethinking Prisoners’ Discourse” (Guest Editor’s Introduction). Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 35.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2002): 393-405.
“Legally Blind: Seeking Alternative Literacies From Prison.” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 35.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2002): 599-624.
“Two Unpublished Letters from Lady Morgan to Richard Jones.” English Language Notes 23.3 (1998): 40-52.
“To Succeed in Becoming Criminal Without Crime: The Algorithm of True Crime Texts.” Symploke 6.1-2 (1998): 145-156.
Reviews:
Review: Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice by Michael Hames-Garcia and Questionable Charity: Gender, Humanitarianism, and Complicity in U.S. Literary Realism by William M. Morgan, American Literature 77.4 (December 2005): 864-867.
Review: Law, Crime and Sexuality: Essays in Feminism by Carol P. Smart, Crime, Law & Social Change 26.4 (1996): 385-388.
Forthcoming:
“The Rickety Bridge: Prisoners and Human Rights in the Literature Classroom.” Approaches to Teaching Human Rights and Literature. Eds. Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and Alexandra Schultheis, forthcoming 2012.“Reading Is My Window”: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons; University of North Carolina Press, 2010
(Winner, 2011 Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies)
(Winner, 2010 PASS Award from the National Council of Crime and Delinquency)
(Honorable Mention, 2011 Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association)
The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading; University of Illinois Press, 2012
Articles:
“‘Keepin’it real’: Incarcerated Women’s Readings of African American Urban Fiction.” From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Anouk Lang. University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
“Legal Brutality: Prisons and Punishment, the American Way,” American Literary History 22.3 (Fall 2010): 698-713.
“‘I lived that book!’: Reading Behind Bars.” Interrupted Life: The Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States. Ed. Rickie Solinger. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. 180-87.
“Reading and Reckoning in a Women’s Prison.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 50.3 (2008): 304-328. Special Issue on Detention. Ed. Phillip Barrish.
“Books as Bombs: Incendiary Reading Practices in Women’s Prisons.” PMLA 123.3 (May 2008): 666-672.
“Beard v. Banks: Deprivation as Rehabilitation.” PMLA 122.3 (May 2007): 779-783.
“‘Something Rogue’: Commensurability, Commodification, Crime, and Justice in Toni Morrison’s Later Fiction.” Modern Fiction Studies52.2 (Summer 2006): 440-469.
“Prison Narratives, Narrative Prisons: Incarcerated Women Reading Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man.” After the Pain: Critical Essays on Gayl Jones, Ed. Fiona Mills and Keith Mitchell, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. 173-202.
“Prison Narratives, Narrative Prisons: Incarcerated Women Reading Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man.” Feminist Studies 30.2 (Summer 2004): 456-482.
(winner of 2003 Feminist Studies Award)
“Racial House, Big House, Home: Contemporary Abolitionism in Toni Morrison’s Paradise.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 4.2 (Spring 2004): 36-63.
“Living to Read True Crime: Theorizations from Prison.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 25.1-2 (Winter/Spring 2003): 55-89.
“Provocations and Possibilities: Rethinking Prisoners’ Discourse” (Guest Editor’s Introduction). Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 35.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2002): 393-405.
“Legally Blind: Seeking Alternative Literacies From Prison.” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 35.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2002): 599-624.
“Two Unpublished Letters from Lady Morgan to Richard Jones.” English Language Notes 23.3 (1998): 40-52.
“To Succeed in Becoming Criminal Without Crime: The Algorithm of True Crime Texts.” Symploke 6.1-2 (1998): 145-156.
Reviews:
Review: Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice by Michael Hames-Garcia and Questionable Charity: Gender, Humanitarianism, and Complicity in U.S. Literary Realism by William M. Morgan, American Literature 77.4 (December 2005): 864-867.
Review: Law, Crime and Sexuality: Essays in Feminism by Carol P. Smart, Crime, Law & Social Change 26.4 (1996): 385-388.
Forthcoming:
“Victim.” Rethinking Therapeutic Culture. Eds. Trysh Travis and Timothy Aubry. University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2013.
In-Progress:
“Mendings” (book manuscript)
Additional Info
- Director of Undergraduate Studies, DAAS, 2010-2013
- Director of English Department Writing Program, 2012-
- awarded Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, University of Michigan, 2010
- awarded Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Faculty Fellowship, 2007-2008 (accepted)
- awarded Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2007-2008 (declined)
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