Toni Bowers received her Ph.D. from Stanford, specializing in British literature and culture from Charles II’s restoration in 1660 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. She co-founded Penn’s Atlantic Studies Seminar in 2001, was Visiting Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh 1999-2000, and was for many years Faculty-in-Residence at Kings Court-English House college house, where she founded the undergraduate humanities society Perspectives in Humanities.

Dr. Bowers regularly presents her scholarship across the United States and has lectured by invitation in Canada, England, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland. In addition to her undergraduate teaching, she leads graduate seminars, directs and advises doctoral dissertations, supervises both undergraduate and graduate-level independent studies, and serves on various committees for the English Department, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the University. These include faculty hiring, promotion, and governance committees, committees overseeing undergraduate and graduate curricula, graduate admissions, and panels awarding fellowships and prizes, She is also frequently asked by other universities and foundations in the US, Canada, and Britain to serve on doctoral committees, tenure cases, fellowship competitions, and oral examinations. In addition, she publishes book reviews in scholarly journals and serves as publication consultant for journals and university presses.

Professor Bowers’ research and writing focus particularly on how representations of intimate relations shaped and reinforced distributions of power during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. She also publishes and teaches on writing by and about women, partisan political writing, the discursive construction of "Great Britain," and prose fiction in England and Scotland. In addition to her many essays in scholarly journals and collections (see c.v., below), she is the author of /The Politics of Motherhood: British Writing and Culture, 1660-1760/ (Cambridge University Press) and a newly completed book manuscript, /Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760/. She is currently working on a book about the 1707 Union of England and Scotland and co-editing (with John Richetti) an abridgement of Richardson’s /Clarissa/ for undergraduate classrooms.

Instructions for students for letters of recommendation

CURRICULUM VITAE

Toni Bowers, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania
tbowers@english.upenn.edu

Education

Stanford University
Ph.D. in English Literature, 1991
M.A. in English and American Literature, 1988

University of Southern California
A.M. in English and American Literature, 1984

Houghton College
B.A. in English and Religion, 1980


Publications

I. Book

-- The Politics of Motherhood: British Writing and Culture, 1680-1760.
Cambridge University Press. 1996.

II. Articles in Refereed Journals

-- "Gender Studies and Eighteenth Century Literary Criticism." Literature Compass. Summer, 2007 (forthcoming).

-- "Seduction Narratives and Tory Experience in Augustan England." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 40(Summer, 1999): 128-154.

-- "Jacobite Ideology and the Poetry of Jane Barker." English Literary History (ELH) 64:4 (Winter, 1997): 857-689.

-- "A Point of Conscience: Breastfeeding and Maternal Authority in Pamela, Part 2." Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 7:3 (April, 1996): 259-279.
-- Reprinted with new “Afterword,” Inventing Maternity : Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865, Ed. Susan C. Greenfield and Carol Barash.Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

-- "Critical Complicities: Savage Mothers, Johnson's Mother, and the Containment of Maternal Difference." The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, 5 (1992): 115-146.

-- "Fiction as Truth: Personal Identity in Johnson's Life of Savage." Studies in English Literature, 30 (Summer, 1990): 487-501.

-- 'An Imperfect Tale': Interpretive Accountability in Wieland." Studies in American Fiction, 18:1 (Spring, 1990): 41-54.

-- "A Single Capacity in The Beggar's Opera." Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21 (1987-88): 212-227.

Articles in Collections

-- -- "Seduction Stories and British Self-Fashioning: Gender, Party, Nation." A Companion to the EighteenthCentury Novel. Blackwell Companion to Literature and Culture, Ed. Paula Backsheider and Catherine Ingrassia (London: Blackwell Press, 2006).

-- "Domesticity and the Family and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Defining Gender, 1450-1910. On-line commissioned essay, with hyperlinks. (Marlborough: Adam Mathew Publications, 2005).

-- "Monstrous Motherhood: Maternal Subjectivity and the Necessity of Infanticide in Defoe's Roxana.” Writing British Infanticide: Gender, Narrative, and the Professions, 1722-1859. Ed. Jennifer Thorn. University of Delaware Press, 2003, pp. 172-195.

-- “Collusive Resistance: Sexual Agency and Partisan Politics in Love in Excess.” The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood: Essays on Her Life and Work. Ed. Kirsten T. Saxton and Rebecca P. Bocchicchio. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000, pp. 48-68.

-- "'Making Provision': The Case of Queen Anne in 1708." Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, Eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, 57-74.

-- "Motherhood." Encyclopedia of Feminist Theory. Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1997.

-- "'A Mistake Often Made:' Going in Drag in Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and in Aphra Behn's Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684-89)." Excerpts. Gay and Lesbian Studies Newsletter. 1996.

-- "Sex, Lies, and Invisibility: Amatory Fiction from Behn to Haywood." The Columbia History of the British Novel. John J. Richetti, Ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994: 50-72.

V. Books in Progress

-- Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1800.

-- (with John Richetti), Richardson’s Clarissa: A New Abridgement Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. (Forthcoming 2007.) -- (with John Richetti), Richardson’s Clarissa: A New Abridgement Peterborough: Broadview P. (For classroom use, with supplemental materials and full-text website; forthcoming 2008.)


VI. Book Reviews

 Susan Staves, Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing. Journal of British Studies (forthcoming)

-- Review essay (with Stephanie Harzewski), "An Unfinished Renaissance:
New Editions of Eliza Haywood," The Age of Johnson 13 (2002): 473-507.

-- Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century. The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual. Vol. 12, 1999.

-- David Fausett, The Strange Surprising Sources of Robinson Crusoe. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 1997.

-- E. B. Brophy, Women's Lives and the Eighteenth-Century English Novel. Eighteenth-Century Studies. 26:1 (Fall, 1992): 115-118.

Honors

2007: Midwest Society for 18th-Century Studies Research Fellowship, Newberry Library (2 months)

2002-03: Visiting Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Urbana, IL.

2002: Faculty Research Fellowship, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

1999-2000: British Academy/Newberry Fellowship for Study in the United Kingdom

1999-2000: Visiting Lecturer, Dept of English and Scottish Literature, University of Edinburgh.

1998-99: Type-A Research Grant, Research Foundation, University of Pennsylvania

1995-96: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Newberry Library

1994: Nomination. Recognition Award for Emerging Scholars, American Association of University Women

1993-4: W.M. Keck Foundation Fellowship

1993-4: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship

1993: Trustees Council of Penn Women Summer Research Fellowship

1993: Nomination. Society of Junior Fellows, Harvard University

1992: Donald Greene Postdoctoral Prize for the Year's Best Essay, Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California (for "Critical Complicities," above)

1992: Michael J. Connell Foundation Fellowship for research at the Huntington Library

1992: Type-A Research Grant, Research Foundation, University of Pennsylvania

1990-91: Gender Studies Dissertation Prize, Stanford University

1989-90: Graduate Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center

Teaching

July, 1997- present: Associate Professor, Dept. of English, University of Pennsylvania
1999-2000: Visiting Lecturer, Dept. of English and Scottish Literature, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland
July, 1991 - July, 1997: Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, University of Pennsylvania

Courses taught:
I.Graduate Seminars:
-- Writing Women, 1660-1800
-- Richardson (close study of all extant works)
-- Virtue and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1800
-- Literature and the Culture of Seduction, 1680-1800
-- Politics and Intellectual Prose in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Britain
-- Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites: Partisan Writing, 1680-1750
-- Mellon Foundation Summer Dissertation Workshop: Writing the Proposal (twice)
-- English 800: Teaching Writing through Literature and Film (pedagogy seminar)
-- Seduction Stories and the Problem of Complicity, 1660-1800
II. Undergraduate Courses:
-- The British Novel, 1680-present
-- The Eighteenth-Century British Novel
-- Women and Literature, 1660-1800
-- The Pamela Controversy: 1740-the present
-- Eighteenth Century Atlantic Literature and Culture (co-taught with Prof. Christopher Looby)
-- Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Drama
-- Women’s Prose Fiction: Behn to Austen
-- The Enlightenment in Britain (philosophical and political writing)
-- Sexuality and Power in Eighteenth-Century British Writing and Culture
-- The Politics of Intimate Relations: Hobbes to Wollstonecraft
-- Seduction and Literature
-- Tennessee Williams: from Stage to Screen
-- Introduction of Literary Study: Transformations of the Orpheus Myth
-- Gender, Sexuality, and Literature

1987-1989: Teaching Assistant, Dept. of English, Stanford University
1983-86: Assistant Lecturer, Dept. of English, University of Southern California

Papers Presented

I. By Invitation or as Keynote Speaker


-- “Women’s Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies: What’s the Difference?” Keynote Address, Women’s Studies Month, Auburn University, March, 2007.

-- “Behn’s Monmouth: Seduction Stories and Tory Ideology in the 1680s”
St. John’s University, March, 2007.

-- “Perspectives in Humanities: The First Ten Years.” Keynote Speaker, University of Pennsylvania College Houses Living-Learning Programs, April, 2005.
-- Reprinted in Pennsylvania Gazette, July-August 2005, p. 25.

-- "Home and World in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: John Galt's Annals of the Parish." Keynote Speaker, Early-Modern Center Winter Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara, February, 2004.

-- “’A Mariage GOD Neither Sends Nor Comes To’; Sexual Metaphors for the Union of England and Scotland, 1705-06.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Dept. of English, Program for Research in the Humanities, Women’s Studies, and “Nationalism” Faculty Reading Group), October, 2002.

-- .“Keeping Difference Different: Current Trends in Publishing Texts by Eliza Haywood.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Colorado Springs, Colorado, April, 2002.

-- “Stories of the Breast.” Department of Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, March, 2001.

-- .“Tory Strategies in Haywood and Behn.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, New Orleans, LA, April 2001.

-- “Making Provision: Queen Anne in 1708,” European Society for the Study of English, Helsinki, August, 2000.

-- “The Seduction of Charles Grandison.” Invited Lecture, The Luxury Project, Warwick University, July, 2000.

-- “Seduction Stories and Partisan Politics: The Case of Love in Excess.” Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar, Leeds University, April, 2000.

-- “From Maternity to Seduction.” University of Glasgow Graduate Group, November, 1999.

-- "The Fugitive Kind and Marlon Brando's Body." Celebrating Tennessee Williams symposium, The Wilma Theater, Philadelphia. May 24, 1999.

-- "Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites: Making a Difference." Jacobitism and Social History (international conference). University of Pennsylvania, May, 1997.

-- “Women and Literature in Eighteenth-Century England.” Keynote Address, “Women in the time of Mozart” Symposium. Philadelphia Classical Symphony, October, 1997.
-- "Writing Winning Fellowship and Grant Proposals" Graduate School of Arts Sciences Lecture, Fall, 1997.

-- "Seduction Stories and Tory Experience in Augustan England." Swarthmore College, Februry, 1997.

-- "'Force or Fraud': Questions About Agency." National Endowment for the Humanities Fellows' Seminar. Newberry Library. May, 1996.

--"Augustan Bad Mothers." English Department Colloquium. Yale University. March, 1996.

-- "William Hogarth and Mid-Eighteenth-Century Maternal Ideologies." Interdisciplinary Lecture (sponsored by the departments of English, Art History, and Child Development). Connecticut College. March, 1996.

-- "Maternal Failure and Maternal Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Britain." Chicago-Area Eighteenth-Century Faculty Seminar. February, 1996.

-- "Queen Anne and the Political Authority of Maternal Symbolism." Huntington Library. December, 1995.
-- "Queen Anne's Motherhood."
--- . Opening Lecture, Women's History Month, Grinnell College, February, 1994.
---. Keynote Address, Women's History Month, Cornell College, February, 1994.

II. As Panel Participant at Academic Conferences (selected)

-- "Aphra Behn and the Duke of Monmouth: Seducing the Seducer," Midwest Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October, 2006.

-- "Amatory Fiction's Phony Translations," Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague and Leiden, Netherlands, July, 2006.

-- “Hope Deferred: Jane Barker’s Love Intrigues in 1719,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montreal, Quebec, March, 2006

-- "Suing for Rape: Complicity and the Uses of Seduction in Old Bailey Rape Trials, 1700-1760." Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, December, 2004.

-- “Sexual Metaphors for an Ephemeral Nation: Representing Loss in Scottish Nationalist Writing.” Modern Language Association, Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Literature Division Seminar, New York City, December, 2002.

-- “Add Gender and Stir: Challenges from the Pamphlet Debate of 1705-06.” Union and Cultural Identities: : Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society and Center for the History of the Book, Edinburgh, Scotland. July, 2002.
Up
-- “Keeping Difference Different: Publishing Texts by Eliza Haywood.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Colorado Springs, Colorado, April, 2002.

-- “Tory Strategies in Haywood and Behn.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, New Orleans, LA, April 2001.

-- “Seduction and the Rise of Tory Ideology.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,
Milwaukee, WI. April, 1999.

-- "Queen Anne and the Myth of Maternal Authority." East-West Conference for Younger Scholars. International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS), Bourdeaux, France, July, 1998. (Ten scholars selected from the Western nations, ten from the former Eastern Bloc)

-- "Female Desire and Tory Politics in Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, South Bend, IN. April, 1998.

--"Resistance and Complicity in Eighteenth-Century British Seduction Stories." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Austin, TX. April, 1996.

-- "'A Mistake Often Made:' Going in Drag in Aphra Behn's Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister." Modern Language Association of America. December, 1995.

-- "Teaching the Canon in Spite of Ourselves: or, Why Pamela is Still on my Syllabus." North-East American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. September, 1995.

-- "Monstrous Motherhood: Maternal Subjectivity and the Necessity of Infanticide in Defoe's Roxana."
--- Northeast Society for 18th-Century Studies. October, 1994;
--- East-Central Society for 18th-Century Studies. October, 1994.

-- "'Thy Nursing Mother': Queen Anne and the Politics of Maternal Representation." Modern Language Association Convention. December, 1993.

-- "Amatory Fiction in (Literary) History: The Case of Eliza Haywood." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. April, 1993.

-- "Agency, Complicity and Power in Richardson's Clarissa." Northeast Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. October, 1992.

-- "Literary Theory as Ideology: Dryden's Discourse on Satire and Official Propaganda After the Glorious Revolution." International Federation for Modern Language and Literature, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. August, 1990 (by proxy).

-- "Maternity, Legitimacy, and Political Authority: Queen Anne and the Myth of Maternal Power." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. April, 1990.

-- "Filmer and Locke: Seventeenth-Century Patriarchal Theory and Practice." Gender and Social Theory Roundtable. Stanford University. April, 1990.

-- "The Warming-Pan Scandal and the Death of Prince George: Case Studies in Augustan Maternal Mythology." Stanford Humanities Center. April, 1990.

-- "Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Maternal Mythology." Mid-Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. October, 1990.

-- "Refractions of the Revolution in France: Parental Tyranny and
Filial Disobedience in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey." De Bartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies. March, 1989.



Conference Sessions Organized

“Varieties of Religious Resistance in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Britain," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Atlanta, GA, March, 2007.

“English Seventeenth-Century Political Pamphlets," Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague and Leiden, Netherlands, July, 2006.

“Literary Writers as Partisan Writers,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Las Vegas, NV, April, 2005.

"Balancing the Personal and Professional." Women's Studies Day, Greater Philadelphia Women's Studies Consortium. West Chester University. May 7, 1999. (with Professor Farah Griffin, University of Pennsylvania)

“Who Was Reading Novels?” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, April, 1999.

"Representing Seduction." Northeast Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. October, 1992.

"Imagining Matriarchy," Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. February, 1990.

Service

1. Service to the Profession

2008-: McNeil Center's Advisory Council
2007 - : Executive Committee of the Delegates, American Council of Learned Societies
2007- : Executive Committee, Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Modern Language Association
2003- 2007: ASECS Delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies
2003-2005: Delegate Assembly, Modern Language Association
2002-2004: Vice-President, Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society

Consultant Editor, “Defining Gender Online,” Adam Mathews Publications.

Editorial Referee/ Specialist Reader
-- Cambridge University Press (books)
-- University of Michigan Press (books)
-- Modern Language Association of America (books)
-- Blackwell Press (books)
-- University of Delaware Press (books)
-- Eighteenth-Century Fiction (essays)
-- Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (essays)
-- Nineteenth-Century Contexts (essays)
-- Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (essays)

Consultant Judge, Fellowship Competitions
-- Newberry Library
-- McNeil Center for Early-American Studies

Consultant, Hiring Committees
-- Harvard University, English Department

Tenure and Pre-Tenure Review Consultant for various universities, including NYU, Duke, Hofstra, Colby, Harvard.

II. University Service (University of Pennsylvania)

2007 - Faculty Senate Executive Committee
2007- University Council
2006-07: Senior Faculty Mentor, Chi-Ming Yang, Penn English Dept.
2006-08: Senior Faculty Mentor, Hunt Howell, McNeil Center for Early-American Studies
2003 Selection Committee, McNeil Center for Early-American Studies Barra Fellowship;
Selection Committee, McNeil Center for Early-American Studies Post-Doctoral Fellowship
2002- present Co-Founder, Organizer, and Convener, Penn Atlantic Studies Faculty Seminar
2001 Selection Committee, Trustees Council of Penn Woman Summer Faculty Fellowship
2001 “What I Do and Why I Do It.” Perspectives in the Humanities Faculty Talk.
2000-01 SAS Internal Review Committee for the University Writing Program
1997- 01 Faculty Liaison, Penn Humanities Forum-Perspectives in Humanities
1998-99 Rose Award Committee (Undergraduate Research Award, SAS)
1998-99 Nassau Fund Committee (Undergraduate Research Award, SAS)
1998 Penn Preview Faculty Speaker
1998-present Trustees’ Committee for Student Life
1997 Faculty Consultant, School of Arts and Sciences, Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship
1994-present Resident Faculty Director, Twenty-First Century Humanities Initiative “Perspectives in the Humanities, Kings Court College House, Harrison College House, and Penn Humanities Forum
1993-present Freshman Adviser, College of Arts and Sciences
1994 Faculty Lecturer, Parents' Weekend
1993 Faculty Text Selection Committee, Freshman Reading Project
1993 Organizer of campus visit for novelist Alan Lightman
1993 Faculty Judge, Sorority Writing Awards
1992-present Faculty in Residence, Kings Court College House
1992-present Seminar Leader, Freshman Reading Project
1991-2, 1994-5 Faculty Judge, University Annual Writing Awards (WATU)
1990-92 Fellowship Selection Committee, Inst. For Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University.



III. Departmental Service (University of Pennsylvania English Department)

2005-06 Third-year review committee
Tenure review committee
Hiring Committee (junior 18th-century search)
2001-2002 Third-year review committee
Faculty Search Committee
2000-2001 Undergraduate Executive Committee (Curriculum)
Tenure Review Committee
Diane Hunter Dissertation Prize Committee (Chair)
1999 Associate Chair, Department of English
(junior faculty hiring, faculty prizes, honorary degrees, visiting professorships, departmental fundraising initiatives, departmental publications, non-standing faculty)
1998- 1999 English Department Executive Committee
1998-1999 Undergraduate Executive Committee (Curriculum)
1998-99 Faculty Search Committee
1997 Third-year review committee
1991-present Dissertation adviser (English and Comparative Literature)
1991-present Adviser to Undergraduate Majors (English and
Women's Studies)
1991-1997 Assistant Professors' Committee
1993-94 Faculty Search Committee
1993-94 Library Committee






IV. Memberships

Modern Language Association of Americal;
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society
Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies