Noreen O'Connor, Ph.D.
Biography
Noreen O’Connor, Ph.D., a professor of English, teaches courses on literature, writing, and film. She advises The Crown, the King’s College student newspaper, and hosts a program on Radio King’s College. She has a Ph.D. in British literature and an M.Phil. in American literature from The George Washington University; an M.A. in literature and writing from San Francisco State University; and a B.A. in English from the University of California, Irvine.
Her research and teaching focuses on anglophone modernism, transnational literature, writing and gender, medical narrative, the novel, print culture, film studies, and media studies. Her NEH Summer Institute grant supported ongoing research in modernist print culture, and her Fulbright-Hayes award fostered the study of East African anglophone women’s literature. She co-led two study abroad courses to India. She serves the larger community as the steering committee coordinator of the Peace and Justice Center and as vice president of the PA-AAUP Caucus. Currently president of the International Elizabeth von Arnim Society, Dr. O'Connor was a founding member of the society. She co-organized the International Women Writers and Comedy Conference online in 2022, and the joint Elizabeth von Arnim and Katherine Mansfield Conference, held in 2017 at the Huntington Library. Her most recent publication, Elizabeth von Arnim: The Unexpected Modernist, is expected 2025 (Edinburgh University Press). In addition, she has scholarly publications on Edith Wharton, Elizabeth von Arnim, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Virginia Woolf, and Santa Claus.
Education
- B.A., English, University of California, Irvine
- M.A., English, San Francisco State University
- Ph.D., British Literature, The George Washington University
Publications and Presentations
- “Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife” and “Introduction: The Unexpected Modernist.” Eds. Noreen O’Connor and Jennifer Shepherd. Elizabeth von Arnim: The Unexpected Modernist. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 2025.
- “Writing Toward a New World: Awakenings in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Bliss’ and Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April.” Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim: Katherine Mansfield Studies, vol. 11. Eds. Isobel Maddison, Gerri Kimber, and Todd Martin. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 2019
- “Inexpressible Mourning in Katherine Mansfield’s The Aloe.” “Reconsidering the Great War in Light of Women’s Voices and Experiences” Panel. Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, March 7, 2024
- “‘It really is everybody's duty to know at least something of what's being done in the world’: Transnational Networks and Speaking up for Birth Control.” The American Interwar Magazine Market Panel. Modern Language Association Conference. Philadelphia, Jan 4, 2024.
- “‘I, Too, Am America’: Desegregating the Modernist Manifesto.” Modernist Forms: Langston Hughes and his Contemporaries. Modern Language Association Conference. San Francisco, Jan 5-8, 2023
- “‘Pa, I have runned off with the boarder’: Early film and the feminist comedy of women who run away.” No Laughing Matter? Comedy and Feminist Politics Panel. Women Writers and Comedy, 1890-1950 International Conference. Online 17-18 September 2022.
- “Reading Vera at 100” discussion panel with Isobel Maddison, Jennifer Shepherd, and Juliane Roemhild. Online Webinar sponsored by The Elizabeth von Arnim Society, 18 November 2021.
- Zora Neale Hurston: Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick” Invited keynote speaker. 7 August 2021. Literature Cambridge, “Women Writers Season.”
- “A Pedagogical Guide to Writers' Homes and Archives in the Northeast.” Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, March 5-8, 2020
- “‘In the Quarter of the Negro’: Performing Harlem’s Presence in Langston Hughes’s ‘Ask Your Mama.’” Public, Performance, and Politics: Langston Hughes and His Contemporaries Panel. Modern Language Society Conference. Seattle, January 9-12, 2020
- “Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife.” Elizabeth von Arnim: Identities Conference. Toulon, France. July 2-4, 2019
- “Spectres of Paris: Conjuring and Countering Nostalgic Modernism in Hemingway’s City.” Hemingway in Paris: XVIII International Hemingway Conference. American University of Paris, July 2018
- “Rivers, Mountains, and Gardens: Traumatic Narratives and Mourning in Hemingway, Mansfield, and von Arnim.” Hemingway and War Panel. Modern Language Association Conference, New York City, New York, January 2018
Awards and Designations
- The Honorable Max and Tillie Rosenn Award for Faculty Excellence, King’s College, 2023.
- Project Narrative Summer Institute on Narrative, Medicine, and Disability, Summer 2020.
- NEH Summer Institute Grant Recipient.
- “City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press.” New York City College of Technology (CUNY), Brooklyn, New York. June 14-26, 2015.
- U.S. Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad Program to study in Uganda (focus on educational and medical education systems), Summer 2014.
- Edith Wharton Essay Prize, for “Consumer Culture and Jazz Age Discontents: Edith Wharton in Pictorial Review.” Edith Wharton Society, 2012.
- Shoval Center Grant to support Faculty-Community Historical Research: The “U.S. Moving Picture Corporation” Silent Film Project. Summer 2010.