Shannon Brennan

Shannon Brennan is an Associate Professor of English at Carthage and also serves as the Director of Writing Development. She earned her B.A. degrees in English and theater from the University of Maryland, her M.A. in English from Fordham University, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She specializes in fin-de-siècle American literature, queer theory, and cultural studies, and most recently she has been teaching in UCLA’s Writing Programs.

• B.A. — English, University of Maryland
• B.A. — Theater, University of Maryland
• M.A. — English, Fordham University
• Ph.D. — English, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Studies in American Literature
• Queer Literature and Theory
• Jazz Literature
• The Gay 90s: Sex, Love, and Money at the Fin-de-Siècle
• Advanced Writing: Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

• Queer Theory
• American Literature (19th-20th century)
• Realism
• Cultural Studies
• New Materialisms
• Nonhuman Animals
• Edith Wharton

• “Queer Wharton: The Exultations and Agonies of Kate Clephane’s Closet.” Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton. 2023.
• “Troublesome Knowledge: Autotheory in the Queer Classroom.” ASAP/Journal. 6.3 (Fall 2021).
• “The Stuff of Immortality: Lois Bielefeld’s Photographs of Daily Afterlife.” Introduction to To Commit to Memory, by Lois Bielefeld. 2021.
• “Edith Wharton’s Humanimal Pity.” The New Edith Wharton Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019.
• “‘Anyhow, it’s Queer Reading’: Queer Objects and Orientations in Edith Wharton’s (Haunted) Houses.” Legacy 34.1 (June 2017).