Joan Cooper teaches and writes about Romantic literature, poetry, and poetics. She received her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and her PhD from the University of Denver. She has a JD from Washington University Law School and an LLM specializing in labor law from Georgetown University.
Her writing examines three second-generation Romantic writers -- Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. She contends these writers fashioned history by arguing for certain “domestic virtues” that would determine the future course of the nation and national identity. Her investigation opens the doors to future scholarship because the ways in which we view our cultural history through literature determine future actions and domestic virtues and affect the very well-being of our public and private morality. Her paper was presented as part of the Scottish Literature Forum panel session, “Voices Raised in Opposition: Scottish Radicals & the Counterculture.” Additional current research and writing focuses on the ways in which Jackie Kay challenged convention, emphasizing the National Theatre of Scotland’s dramatization of Ms. Kay’s autobiographical memoir, Red Dust Road (2010).
Areas of Specialty
- British Literature
- Cultural Studies
- Romanticism
- Cultural Theory