Stokes Hall S445
Telephone: 617-552-2014
Email: lori.harrison.1@bc.edu
Lori Harrison-Kahan specializes in American literature and culture, women鈥檚 writing, and comparative race and ethnic studies. She is the editor of The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson聽(Wayne State University Press, 2019), which won the 2021 Best Book Edition Award from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW), and the co-editor, with Barbara Cantalupo, of Heirs of Yesterday by Emma Wolf (Wayne State University Press, 2020). Lori鈥檚 monograph, The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary (Rutgers University Press/American Literatures Initiative, 2011), received an honorable mention for the SSAWW Book Award. She is a recipient of the American Studies Association鈥檚 Gloria E. Anzald煤a Award for Independent Scholars and Contingent Faculty, and her article 鈥淢iriam Michelson鈥檚 Yellow Journalism and the Multi-Ethnic West,鈥 co-authored by Karen E. H. Skinazi, was awarded the Don D. Walker Prize for best essay in Western American literary studies.
Lori is currently working on a book manuscript titled 鈥淲est of the Ghetto: Pioneering Women Writers and Jewish American Literary Culture,鈥 which tells the stories of now forgotten late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Jewish women writers from the Western United States. Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Modernist Studies Association. In 2016, she was a scholar-in-residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and a Robert E. Levinson Fellow at the University of California Berkeley鈥檚 Bancroft Library. Current editorial projects include a Penguin Classics edition of Elizabeth Garver Jordan鈥檚 writings (co-edited with Jane Carr) and a volume of scholarly essays on Jewish women鈥檚 writing in the United States (co-edited with Annie Atura Bushnell and Ashley Walters). A former book review editor of聽MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States,聽she co-edited a special issue of the journal on 鈥淭he Future of Jewish American Literary Studies.鈥
Lori鈥檚 essays and book reviews have been published in聽American Historical Review,聽American Jewish History,聽Callaloo,聽Cinema Journal,聽Jewish Social Studies,聽Journal of American History, Legacy,聽MELUS,聽Modern Drama,聽Modern Fiction Studies,聽Modern Language Studies,聽Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, and聽Tulsa Studies in Women鈥檚 Literature. Her work also appears in the anthologies聽Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature;聽Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion;聽Passing Interest: Racial Passing in U.S. Fiction, Memoirs, Television, and Film, 1990-2010;聽The Race and Media Reader;聽The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction; and聽The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism.聽She has contributed essays on teaching Jewish American and African American literature to the Modern Language Association鈥檚 volumes聽Options for Teaching Jewish American聽Literature聽and聽Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Nella Larsen. She previously served on the editorial board of the Jewish Women鈥檚 Archive鈥檚聽Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women聽and currently serves on the editorial board for Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.
At BC, Lori teaches courses on American literature and culture, including 鈥淎merican Culture: Engaging Difference and Justice,鈥 鈥淗uman Rights and American Women鈥檚 Writing, 1850-1920,鈥 鈥淩eading In/Justice: Literature as Activism from Abolition to #BlackLivesMatter,鈥 鈥淟iterature as Testimony,鈥 and 鈥淗amilton and American Culture.鈥 She also teaches the First-Year Writing Seminar and Creative Nonfiction.