Elise V. Lemire, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Literature
School of Humanities

Office: 1057 HUM Building
Tel: (914) 251-6549
Fax: (914) 251-6559
Email: elise.lemire@purchase.edu

Dr. Elise Lemire is an associate professor of literature in the School of Humanities and a member of the interdisciplinary cinema studies and women's studies faculties. Her interests include 19th-century American literature and culture, the American novel, whiteness studies, feminism, and Hollywood cinema. Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, one in 2007 and one in 1999.

Education

• B.A., 1986, Yale University
• M.A., 1990, Rutgers University
• Ph.D., 1996, Rutgers University

Areas of Expertise

19th-century American literature and culture; the American novel; whiteness studies; feminism; Hollywood cinema.

Honors and Awards

Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 1994; Northeast Modern Language Association Summer Research Grant, 1995; Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 1995-96; Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1999-2000; New York Humanities Speakers Bureau, 2003-2005; Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2007-2008.

Courses Taught

Race and Representation in U.S. Literature and Film
"Race" and the White Literary Imagination in the U.S.
Reinventing the American Renaissance
The Nineteenth-Century Novel in the U.S.
American Women Writers
Nature in U.S. Literature
U.S. Surveys I and II
Women and Film
Introduction to Women's Studies

Research Interests

The historical development of whiteness in the U.S.; the discourses of interracial sex and marriage; Thoreau and the history of race in Concord and Walden Woods.

Publications

Books

Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

"Miscegenation:" Making Race in America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002 (paperback, 2009).

Essays

"'The Murders in the Rue Morgue': Amalgamation Discourses and the Race Riots of 1838 in Poe's Philadelphia."  In Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race.  Eds. Liliane Weissberg and J. Gerald Kennedy.  Oxford University Press, 2001.  177-204

"Voyeurism and the Post-War Crisis of Masculinity in Rear Window."  In The Cambridge Film Handbook on "Rear Window."  Ed. John Belton.  Cambridge University Press, 2000.  57-90.