For a complete and current CV, please email lisa[dot]mendelman[at]menlo[dot]edu.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in English, University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
M.A. in English, Stanford University, 2007
B.A. in English, Stanford University, 2004
• Interdisciplinary Honors in Feminist Studies; Phi Beta Kappa
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Associate Professor of English & Digital Humanities, Menlo College, 2022-
Assistant Professor of English & Digital Humanities, Menlo College, 2016-2022
Instructor, Continuing Studies, Stanford University, Summer 2019
Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles Department of English, 2015-16
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Health humanities; digital humanities; American literature since 1865; transnational modernisms; affect studies; gender studies; critical race studies; critical disability studies; literature and science; visual and material culture.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Book
• Modern Sentimentalism: Affect, Irony, and Female Authorship in Interwar America, Oxford University Press, 2019 (UK) and 2020 (US). 256 pages.
Journal articles
• “Diagnosing America: The Literatures of Mental Health in the US.” With Gordon Hutner. American Literary History, vol. 35, no. 3, 2023, pp. 1123–31.
• “Modeling Therapy as Discourse in Twentieth-Century American Literature.” With Mark Algee-Hewitt, Anna Mukamal, and Kendra Terry. American Literary History, vol. 35, no. 3, 2023, pp. 1235–58.
• “The Generative Dissensus of Reading the Feminist Novel, 1995-2020: A Computational Analysis of Interpretive Communities.” With Anna Mukamal. Journal of Cultural Analytics, vol. 11, 2021, pp. 31–73.
• “Diagnosing Desire: Mental Health and Modern American Literature, 1890-1955.” American Literary History, vol. 33, no. 3, 2021, pp. 601–19.
• “Modernism & Diagnosis.” With Heather A. Love. Modernism/modernity, vol. 6, cycle 2, 2021.
• “Character Defects: The Racialized Addict and Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 26, no. 4, 2019, pp. 727–52.
• First author, “Sentimental Avatars: Gender Identification and Vehicles of Selfhood in Popular Media from Nineteenth-Century Novels to Modern Video Games.” With Rabindra A. Ratan, Joseph Fordham, Megan Knittel, and Oskar Milik. Games and Culture, 2019.
• “Unaffected: Marilynne Robinson’s Postmodern Sentimentalism.” Irish Journal of American Studies, vol. 6, 2017.
• “Ambivalence and Irony: Gendered Forms in Interwar America.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 4, 2015, 23–52.
• “Feeling Hard-Boiled: Modern Sentimentalism and Frances Newman’s The Hard-Boiled Virgin.” American Literary History, vol. 26, no. 4, 2014, pp. 693–715.
• “Resonant Silence: Love, Desire, and Intimacy in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus.” GRAMMA, vol. 17, 2009, 129–44.
• “Critical Thinking and Reading.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, vol. 51, no. 4, 2007, pp. 300–02.
Book chapters
• “Passing Bodies.” With Octavio R. González. Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature, edited by Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp. 176–88.
• “Species of Sentiment.” Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, vol. IV, edited by Lindsay Reckson, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• “Recounting the Literary History of Modern Women Writers: Teaching Quantitative Methods to Undergraduates.” Teaching Modernist Women Writers in English, edited by Janine Utell, MLA Options for Teaching Series, 2021.
• “Sentimental Satire in Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” The Sentimental Mode: Essays in Literature, Film and Television, edited by Jennifer A. Williamson, Jennifer Larson, and Ashley Reed, McFarland, 2014, pp. 36–55.
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS AND HONORS
• NEH Research Fellowship, The Huntington Library, September 2021-May 2022
• Harris Manchester College / Oxford University Summer Research Institute Fellowship, Menlo College, 2020 *Cancelled due to COVID-19
• Digital Humanities Summer Institute Scholarship, University of Victoria, 2020 *
• Modernist Studies Association Research Travel Award, 2019
• Charles B. Emerick Teaching Award, Menlo College, 2017-18
• Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts / US National Science Foundation Travel Award, Fall 2016
• Quarterly Teaching Excellence Award, UCLA Department of English, Winter and Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2012, Spring 2011
RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS & INVITED PRESENTATIONS
• “The Ends and Beginnings of Women’s Mental Health Diagnoses.” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Conference, Pasadena, 2024.
• “The Shapeshifting Mental Health of the Modern Girl.” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Conference, Pasadena, 2024.
• “Women’s Bodies and the Sentimental State.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Brooklyn, 2023.
• “Green Skinned Goddesses: Chlorosis and the Shapeshifting Modern Girl in Science and Literature.” Science Studies Colloquium, University of California, San Diego, 2023.
• “Everybody’s Passing Novel.” With Octavio R. González. Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, 2023.
• “Crises of Character in Covid-19.” Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, 2023.
RECENT TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Menlo College
• Sex and Culture (Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024)
• American Mental Health (Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Fall 2023)
• Joking Matters: Humor and Modern American Fiction (Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2023)
• Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics (Fall 2020)
• Messy Subjects: Identity and the Body (Fall 2019, Spring 2020)
• Modernism / Modernity / America (Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2024)
• Feeling American (Spring 2017)
• American Adolescence (Fall 2016)
Stanford University
• Smart Fiction of the Jazz Age: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wharton, & Others (Summer 2019)
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES
• Reviewer, PMLA, 2024–; American Periodicals, 2023–; Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 2022–; Modernist Cultures, 2021–; Legacy, 2021–; Modernism/modernity, 2020–; American Literary History, 2020–; Leisure Studies, 2020; Religion & Literature, 2019–; Arizona Quarterly, 2018–; College Literature, 2018–.
•Co-organizer and chair, “Modernism and the Maladaptive Mind,” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Chicago, 2024.
• Co-organizer, “The Return to Character,” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Chicago, 2024.
• Modernist Studies Association Treasurer, 2019–22 (elected).
• Member, Curriculum Committee, Menlo College, 2023–.
• Faculty Advisor, Alpha Chi Honor Society, 2023–.
• Member, Faculty Senate, Menlo College, 2016–.
• Resident Fellow, Menlo College, 2017–2020.
• Co-Chair, General Education Program Review, Menlo College, 2019-2020.
• English Department Lead, Assessment Committee, Menlo College, 2017-2019.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
• Member, Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Member, Modernist Studies Association (MSA)
• Member, American Studies Association (ASA)
• Member, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
• Member, Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW)
• Member, University of California Center for New Racial Studies
• Member, Edith Wharton Society
LANGUAGES
• French (advanced reading, intermediate writing and speaking)
• Spanish (elementary proficiency)
Lisa Mendelman 