Attewell
But at that point, the Canadian decided to follow through and, after completing a master's and doctorate program at Cornell University in New York, she gets to do just that. Though Attewell brings a focus on post-colonial literature to UNR, she's found that her reading from before she entered the academic world has come back into her research.
How'd you get to UNR?
Before I came here, I had a one-year teaching position in St. Paul, Minnesota at a small, private, liberal arts school. Of course, there's lovely things about private schools, there's a lot, a lot of money, but I really believe in public education. I had a public education. Growing up in Canada, all my schooling was public and I got a damn good education. The University of Nevada is a relatively accessible institution and I think the mandate it serves is a really worthy mandate and one I'm happy to participate in. I wish there were more resources, both for research, but also for students. But without romanticizing it, I think the human component can matter more (at a public institution). As a teacher, I really feel like I'm making a difference and that that can happen more often at a public institution.
What is your specialty?
At UNR, I teach 20th and 21st century stuff, modern and contemporary. I like to joke I teach literature from every country except the United States. My specialty is really post-colonial and indigenous literature. I also teach core humanities and intro classes. It's nice in the English department, we can teach core writing, it's nice to have 303 as an introductory course, it's kind of self-interest, because these are the students who are presumably going into upper-level English classes. It's nice to think about what we do every year, what sort of questions we ask and what we want students to ask about.
What are you working on now?
The book I'm working on now focuses on British, Australian and New Zealand literature and governing policy. A lot of my undergraduate was in modern British literature and then my dissertation, which is now the book, is to expand our definition of 20th century literature, which has been mostly Anglo. I want to look at the building of a nation and how reproduction plays into it, so human reproduction, eugenics, the science of human breeding.
The book Voyage in the Dark kind of turned me on to it. (The main character) Anna goes through an abortion. The book was published in 1934. I, quite naively, was surprised at how explicit it was. We don't really think about what people did before it was legal, that they didn't talk about it, discuss it or that the associations in the '30s are much more obtuse. So it's looking at how the arguments about abortion were about the health of nation. If we allow women to get abortion, it's going to bring immorality to our country. If we don't legalize abortions, women are dying or their reproductive systems are damaged.
I've always loved to read. I read a lot growing up, all kinds of things, literature and science fiction and it's great because a lot of what is not "high literature" came back to me in my research. So, I'm also working on late 19th, early 20th century British science fiction and reading them as colonial texts in some ways. People like Tolkien and Robert Jordan have been producing speculative fiction and science fantasy or science fiction. What's really interesting is what we call indigenous and writers of color, we think they're not writing in the sort of "trash" genres, but they are.
What do you want to bring to UNR?
I'm on the programming committee in women studies and we're setting up a lecture series for people who are on campus. One is a guy who works in computer science who works in video games and he's going to talk about how gender is represented in video games. Just trying to bring people together, there are a lot of great people here doing a lot of really interesting work. Quite often, to share work with one another, we go elsewhere for conferences or talk to people elsewhere. We don't often share work with one another. I think that is creating a sense of exchange and community.