University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bio

Gillian Silverman’s scholarly interests include American literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and the history of the book. She directs the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at UCD and is co-director of Feminism & Co: Art, Sex, Politics – a public program at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.

Select Publications

Selected Academic Publications

Bodies and Books: Reading and the Fantasy of Communion in Nineteenth-Century America, forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press.

Silverman, Gillian. "'The Best Circus in Town': Embodied Theatrics in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates." American Literary History 21.4 (Winter 2009): 757-787.

"'The Polishing Attrition’: Reading, Writing, and Renunciation in the Work of Susan Warner," Studies in American Fiction 33.1 (Spring 2005): 3-28.

"Sympathy and Its Vicissitudes," American Studies 43.3 (Fall 2003): 5-28.

"Textual Sentimentalism: Incest and Authorship in Melville's Pierre," American Literature 74.2 (June 2002): 345-372. Winner of the 2002 Foerster Prize for the best essay published in American Literature.

Selected Non-academic Publications

"Revive Real Debates: The Famous Lincoln-Douglas Contest Was No Genteel Affair." Los Angeles Times 14 October 2008: A23.

"Surprise Delivery," New York Times Magazine 2 November 2003: 84.

"It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Plagiarism Buster," Newsweek 15 July 2002: 12.

Courses Taught

ENGL 1600: Telling Tales

ENGL 2600: Great Works in British and American Literature

ENGL 3001: Critical Writing

ENGL 3400: Introduction to Women’s Studies

ENGL 3700: American Literature from the Colonial Period to the Civil War

ENGL 4230/5230: The American Novel

ENGL 4306/5306: Survey of Feminist Thought

ENGL 4999: Senior Seminar: Literature and the Law

ENGL 5650: Graduate Survey of American Literature to the Civil War

ENGL 6001: Critical Theory in Literature and Film