Place Precarity and the 19th Century Woman

Throughout the long-nineteenth century, women of color, ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged and working class women, women living in certain religious communities, and aging women often experienced marginalization and social injustice. Women scientists were also expected to take a subordinate role while working alongside men, who often received recognition for the scientific discoveries women made. “Place Precarity & the Nineteenth-Century Woman” will draw upon several rare, unpublished, and out-of-print texts composed between 1775 and 1925 that will highlight the social insecurities, economic and work-related uncertainties, and political instabilities many women faced during this period. 

Jillmarie Murphy is the William D. Williams Professor of Literature, Neuroscience, and Women’s & Gender Studies at Union College, Schenectady, NY. She has written nine books and several journal articles that employ psychology and neuroscience to consider literary representations of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. She recently published a 4-volume collection on Women and the Environment in the Long-Nineteenth Century and is currently working on a new book project that examines the neuroscience behind human-nonhuman animal attachments in naturalist fiction, and a journal article that investigates the neurobiology of in utero/ex utero famine trauma.