Elizabeth Abel
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Elizabeth Abel (born 1945[1]) is an American literary scholar who, as of 2024, holds the John F. Hotchkis Chair in English at the University of California, Berkeley.
Abel holds the John F. Hotchkis Chair in English at the University of California, Berkeley.[2] She was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.[3] She also is a longtime contributor and editorial board member of Critical Inquiry academic journal.[4]
Research and writing
Abel gives her research areas (as of 2024) as "gender and sexuality, psychoanalysis, and twentieth-century fiction" particularly Virginia Woolf, and "race, cultural studies, and visuality".[2]
In 1981 she was guest editor for a special issue of Critical Inquiry, 'Writing and Sexual Difference'. According to Kathryn West in Abel's entry in the Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, the essays marked a shift in feminist literary theory from "recovering a lost tradition to discovering the terms of confrontation with the dominant tradition", by means of "specific historical studies of the ways women revise prevailing themes and styles".[5]
Abel's Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis (1989), an "important study" of the author Virginia Woolf,[6] relates Woolf's work to 1920s social anthropology and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein.[5][6] According to the academic Lisa Ruddick, Abel shows that Woolf "absorbed many of Freud's insights" on gender identity, but simultaneously "inflected them in a manner that we would now call feminist".[6]
Her later books include Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow (2010), a "well-researched, insightful book" on the "aesthetics of signs" associated with racial segregation in the United States; in a generally positive review for The Journal of American History, Christopher P. Lehman criticizes Abel for failing to interview surviving activists.[7] Ulrich Adelt describes the book as the "first comprehensive study" of the subject but writes that it "occasionally borders on over-interpretation" of the images analyzed.[8]
Works
- Authored books
- Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.[5][6]
- Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.[7][8][9][10]
- Odd Affinities: Virginia Woolf's Shadow Genealogies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024.[11][12]
- Edited books
- (ed.) Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.[5][13][14]
- (ed. with Marianne Hirsch and Elizabeth Langland) The Voyage in: fictions of female development. Hanover, NH : Published for Dartmouth College by University Press of New England, 1983[15][16][17]
- (ed. with Emily K. Abel) The Signs reader: women, gender, & scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.[18][19]
- (ed. with Barbara Christian and Helene Moglen) Female subjects in black and white: race, psychoanalysis, feminism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.[20][21][22]
References
- ↑ "Elizabeth Abel". OCLC. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
- 1 2 "Elizabeth Abel". University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
- ↑ Abel, Elizabeth. "Redefining the Sister Arts: Baudelaire's Response to the Art of Delacroix". Critical Inquiry. 6 (3): 363-.
- ↑ Services, University of Chicago IT. "Critical Inquiry". criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
- 1 2 3 4 West, Kathryn (2009). "Abel, Elizabeth". In Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace (ed.). Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory. Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-135-22129-4.
- 1 2 3 4 Lisa Ruddick (1992). "Review: Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis by Elizabeth Abel". Modern Philology. 89 (4): 617–620. JSTOR 438187.
- 1 2 Christopher P. Lehman (2010). "Review: Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow by Elizabeth Abel". The Journal of American History. 97 (3): 851. JSTOR 40960049.
- 1 2 Ulrich Adelt (2013). "Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow by Elizabeth Abel (review)". American Studies. 52 (2). doi:10.1353/ams.2013.0009.
- ↑ Janet Neary (2010). "Review: Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow by Elizabeth Abel". MELUS. 35 (4): 186–188. JSTOR 25759563.
- ↑ Brian Norman (2011). "Review: Signs of the Time: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow by Elizabeth Abel". African American Review. 44 (3): 530–532. JSTOR 23316223.
- ↑ Sophie Oliver (November 22, 2024). "What we want from her books". The Times Literary Supplement. No. 6347. p. 1.
- ↑ Tonya Krouse (2024). "Elizabeth Abel. Odd Affinities: Virginia Woolf's Shadow Genealogies". The Review of English Studies. doi:10.1093/res/hgae071.
- ↑ Terry Eagleton (1984). "Review: Writing and Sexual Difference by Elizabeth Abel". The Modern Language Review. 79 (4): 879–880. JSTOR 3730128.
- ↑ Paula Marantz Cohen (1984). "Review: Writing and Sexual Difference by Elizabeth Abel". Modern Language Studies. 14 (1): 89–90. JSTOR 3194510.
- ↑ Lorrie Goldensohn (1984). "Review: The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, Elizabeth Langland". Studies in the Novel. 16 (3): 339–341. JSTOR 29532294.
- ↑ Elizabeth Boyd Jordan (1984). "Review: The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, Elizabeth Langland". Modern Fiction Studies. 30 (2): 429–430. JSTOR 26281130.
- ↑ Nellie McKay (1983). "Review: The Voyage in: Fictions of Female Development by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, Elizabeth Langland". The Women's Review of Books. 1 (3): 10–11. JSTOR 4019457.
- ↑ Geraldine Joncich Clifford (1984). "Women's Studies in the Male-Dominated University: Review: The Signs Reader: Women, Gender & Scholarship by Elizabeth Abel, Emily K. Abel". Change. 16 (2): 53. JSTOR 40164315.
- ↑ Diane Kirkby (1984). "Review: Women, Gender and Scholarship: The Signs Reader by Elizabeth Abel, Emily Abel". Australasian Journal of American Studies. 3 (2): 74–75. JSTOR 41053371.
- ↑ Joni Jones (1999). "Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism by Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, Helen Moglen". African American Review. 33 (4): 689–691. JSTOR 2901355.
- ↑ Eun Jung Cahill Che (1999). "female subjects in black and white: race, psychoanalysis, feminism by Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, Helene Moglen". American Studies International. 37 (1): 109–110. JSTOR 41279667.
- ↑ Gina M. Rossetti (1998). "Review: Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism by Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, Helene Moglen". South Atlantic Review. 63 (2): 152–155. JSTOR 3201052.
