In honor of her innovative teaching as well as contributions to the intellectual growth of Notre Dame students and the development of the Gender Studies program, Faculty Fellow Susan Cannon Harris has been selected as the 2019 recipient of the Marian Mullin Hancock Excellence in Teaching Gender Studies Award.
Professor Harris has research and teaching interests in Irish literature, drama, performance theory, gender studies, LGBTQ literature, and modern British fiction.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale (summa cum laude); her master’s degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.
Her first book, Gender and Modern Irish Drama, was published in 2002 by the Indiana University Press. In it, she argues that the representations of sacrificial violence central to the work of the Abbey playwrights are intimately linked with constructions of gender and sexuality. Gender and Modern Irish Drama won two awards: the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book at the American Conference for Irish Studies in 2003 and the Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature, also at the American Conference for Irish Studies in 2003. Indeed, it was the first book in ACIS history to win both the first book and the best book prizes.
Professor Harris has also published articles in PMLA, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, James Joyce Quarterly, Eire-Ireland, Victorian Literature and Culture, Twentieth-Century Literature, Breac, and The Emily Dickinson Journal.
Her newest book is Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions: Playwrights, Sexual Politics, and the International Left, 1892-1964 (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Professor Harris will be acknowledged and her award celebrated at the Gender Studies Faculty Spring Reception, Thursday, May 2.