Dr. Yael Shapira
Fields of Interest
My research focuses on eighteenth-century British literature and culture, and I am also interested in gender, feminism, and the relationship between popular and canonical literature. My current research project focuses on forgotten Gothic novels published in Britain in the 1790s.
CV
Positions Held
2019-present Senior Lecturer, English Department, Bar-Ilan University
2011-2019 Lecturer, English Department, Bar-Ilan University
2010-11 Full-time instructor, English Department, Bar-Ilan University
2008-9 Lady Davis Postdoctoral fellow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2006-2008 Visiting scholar, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University
2000-3, 2006 Instructor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ph.D., 2006, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
M.A., 2001, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
B.A. ,1997, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Fellowships, Grants and Prizes
2019-22: Israel Science Foundation Research Grant
2017: Excellence in Teaching Award, Bar-Ilan University
2015-18: Israel Science Foundation Research Grant
March 2011: International Society for the Study of Narrative Prize, Best Article Published in Narrative in 2010 (for “Hairball Speaks: Margaret Atwood and the Narrative Legacy of the Female Grotesque”)
Spring 2010: Postdoctoral research group, “Literature and History: Methodological Challenges Across the Disciplinary Divide.” Funded by the Center for Literary Studies, Hebrew University (co-organizer)
2008-9: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lady Davis Foundation, Israel
2006-7: Postdoctoral International Research Fellowship, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2003-5: Scholarship, English Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2002-3: Doctoral fellowship, The Lafer Center for Women Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Presentations
"Gothic Wedlock: Marriage Gone Bad in Late Eighteenth-Century Popular Fiction." Pulp Fiction Conference, Bar-Ilan University, May 2023
"A Woman’s Life in Men’s Archives: Looking for Isabella Kelly." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, St. Louis, March 2023
"Recovering the Minerva Woman Novelist as Reader." British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Conference, Oxford, January 2023
"Minerva’s Forgotten Women and the Advantages of Biography." British Association of Romantic Studies (BARS) Conference, Ormskirk, August 2022
"The Power of Marginalia: Book Annotation and the Study of Popular Novel-Reading in Romantic-Era Britain." Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) Conference, Amsterdam, July 2022
"Looking for Nobody: Biography and the Forgotten Woman Writer." By the Book: Sixth Annual Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel (SELI), Jerusalem, July 2022
"A Key in the Archives: From a Chance Discovery to a Forgotten Woman Writer's Secret Revenge." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference, Baltimore, March 2022
"On Not Judging a Book by Its (Silly) Cover: Finding More Ghosts! in Northanger Abbey." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference, Baltimore, March 2022
"How to Be Round: Forgotten Women Writers and the Narrative Trap of Literary History." Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative (virtual), May 2021
"Burying the Body Yourself; or, Hardcore Things that Heroines Do in Forgotten Gothic Novels." Roundtable presentation, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) virtual conference, April 2021.
"Finding Nobody: Biography and the Generic Woman Novelist." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) virtual conference, April 2021.
"The Nabob and the Nobody: or, a Detective Story on the Margins of Romantic-Era Fiction." Departmental Seminar, Department of Foreign Literature and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, November 2019
“Annotation and the Elusive Reader of Romantic Popular Fiction.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference, Denver, March 2019
"Minerva Novels as Fan Fiction; or, What if the Macbeths Had a Teenage Daughter?" Roundtable on Eighteenth-Century Fan Fiction, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference, Denver, March 2019
"What's in a Name? The Other MA Program." Third National Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel (SELI), Tel-Aviv University, January 2019
"Clarissa Repurposed; or, How the Fictional Corpse Became Gothic." Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies Research Seminar, University of York, January 2019
"On Reading Minerva Gothics: The Case of Isabella Kelly." English Department Seminar, University of Haifa, December 2018
“Infamously Hybrid: The Monk of Udolpho and the trade-Gothic Reader.” International Gothic Association (IGA) Conference, Manchester, July 2018
"Beyond Catherine Morland; or, Doing Right by the Late Eighteenth-Century Gothic Reader." Reading Now: Practices, Pedagogy, Profession. Israel Science Foundation Workshop, Ben-Gurion University, June 2018
"Henry Fielding, the Dead Body, and the English Novel's Quest for Respectability." Symposium in honor of Prof. Leona Toker, Jerusalem, June 2018
"Forgotten but Familiar: Recreating the Pleasure of the Circulating-Library Gothic Reader." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference, Orlando, March 2018
"'The Most Poetical Topic in the World': Three Dead Beautiful Women Before Poe." Apro-Poe: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Edgar Allan Poe, Bar-Ilan University, January 2018
"In the Footsteps of the Minerva Novelist." Romantic Improvements: British Association of Romantic Studies Conference, York, 2017
“Miss Keppel’s Ordeal: A Dead Body’s ‘It-Narrative.’” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference, Minneapolis, March 2017
“Defoe’s Plague Narrative and the Mixed-Up Reader.” Roundtable Presentation, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference, Minneapolis, March 2017
“'The Itch of a Tale': Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and the Future of Horror." British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Conference, Oxford, UK, January 2016
"The Minerva Effect: Rethinking 'Female Gothic' from the Margins." Romantic Imprints: British Association for Romanticism Conference, Cardiff, 2015
"Gothic Wedlock: Beyond the Radcliffe 'Formula.'" British Women Writer's Conference, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, 2015
“The Competing Discourses of the Dead Body in Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year." Literature at the Crossroads: Knowledge and the Eighteenth Century. Haifa University, 2015
"Isabella Kelly and the Limits of Radcliffean Propriety." Radcliffe at 250: Gothic and Romantic Imaginations Conference, Sheffield, 2014
“Matthew Lewis’ Bloopers; or, From Gothic Stage Technology to the Future of Horror.” International Gothic Association Conference, Surrey, 2013
“The Uses of British Gothic in Early Jewish-American Drama.” British Association for Romantic Studies Conference, Southampton, July 2013
“Happily Ever After: Fairy-Tale Love and the Eighteenth-Century Novel.” International Conference on “Theories of Love and the Novel,” Jerusalem, June 2012
“Facing the Dead: Defoe’s Corpses and the Future of the Plague Narrative.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, Providence, March 2012
“Life Before Crake: Atwood and the Poetic Sorcery of Hybrid-Making.” American Society for Literature and the Environment (ASLE) Conference, Bloomington, June 2011
“Staging Words, Writing Spectacle: or, The Double Life of Matthew Lewis.” Romantic Adaptations Conference, London, March 2011
“Adapting the Booby-Trapped Text: Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ and the Challenge of Adaptation.” Association of Adaptations Studies conference, Berlin, September 2010
“‘Good Natured Gentlemen Might Smile, and Sentimental Souls Might Weep’: Bartleby Goes to Hollywood.” International Conference on “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Jerusalem/ Tel Aviv, December 2008
“Margins and Mirrors: Ann Radcliffe Writes the Popular Author.” 16th Annual British Women Writers Conference, Bloomington, March 2008
“A Thing of Horror: The Dead Body in Anti-Gothic Criticism.” International Conference on Romanticism, Baltimore, October 2007
“The Violated Statue: Venus in the Gothic Novel.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, Atlanta, March 2007
“Unruly Bodies and the Question of Narrative.” Narrative as a Way of Thinking: International Symposium in Honor of Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Jerusalem, November 2005
“Specters in Steel: Walpole, Hamlet, and the Body.” International Gothic Association Conference, Montreal, Canada, August 2005
“The Gothic Novel Answers Its Critics.” Politics and Poetics: School of Literatures Conference, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 2004 (in Hebrew)
“Women Gone Bad: Disgust and Female Transgression in The Monk.” International Gothic Association Conference, Liverpool Hope University College, Liverpool, U.K., July 2003
“The Horror of the Popular Author: On Writing, Status, and Stephen King.” Canonical Literature and Popular Literature – Interrelations: School of Literatures Conference, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 2003 (in Hebrew)
Conferences Organized
By the Book: Sixth National Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. July 3, 2022, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Co-organized with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (Haifa University), Prof. Galia Benziman (Hebrew University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
Strange Days: Fifth National Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. February 1, 2021 (virtual conference). Co-organized with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (Haifa University), Prof. Galia Benziman (Hebrew University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
SELI Goes South: Fourth National Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. February 3, 2020, Ben-Gurion University. Co-organized with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (Haifa University), Prof. Galia Benziman (Hebrew University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
Keywords: Third Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. January 21, 2019, Tel-Aviv University. Co-organized with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (Haifa University), Prof. Galia Benziman (Hebrew University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
Guilty Pleasures: Second National Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. February 1, Bar-Ilan University. Co-organized with Dr. Keren Omry (Haifa University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
Apro-Poe: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Edgar Allan Poe. January 10, Bar-Ilan University. Co-organized with Dr. Yoel Greenberg (Bar-Ilan University)
What Else is New? – Inaugural Conference on the Study of English Literatures in Israel. February 8-9, 2017, Haifa University. Co-organized with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (Haifa University), Prof. Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University), and Prof. Milette Shamir (Tel-Aviv University)
Humanists at Work: On Research Riddles and the Pleasures of Pursuing Them. Bar-Ilan Humanities Faculty Conference, October 28-29, 2013. Co-organized with Dr. Yaakov Mascetti, Comparative Literature Department
Professional Service
2002-present: Editorial board member, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas (published by Johns Hopkins University Press)
Research
Eighteenth-century British literature, history and culture; feminism and gender; women’s writing; Gothic and horror writing; history of the novel; the Minerva Press; popular culture and its relation to the canon.
Courses
683 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
405 The Dark Tradition: Gothic and Horror in English Literature
407 "A Woman in the Shape of a Monster": Gender and Aberrance in English Literature
8005 The Eighteenth-Century British Gothic
808 Literature and Film in the Classroom
820 Inventing the Novel: Authors, Readers, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction
8715 Becoming Jane: The Austen Phenomenon
895 Cinderella Stories: Unequal Matches in the British Novel
Publications
In Progress
Biography and the Trade-Gothic Author: The Case of Isabella Kelly (Under contract with Cambridge University Press for Cambridge Elements series)
Books
Inventing the Gothic Corpse: The Thrill of Human Remains in the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Edited Volumes
Editor, with Omri Herzog and Tamar S. Hess. Canonical and Popular: Literary Dialogues (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007
Edited Journal Issues
Guest editor, with Miranda M. Yaggi, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 8/2, special issue on British women writers (June 2010).
Articles and Book Chapters
"Graveyard Pleasures: Visiting (and Revisiting) the Burial Site in Late Eighteenth-Century Gothic Fiction." Graveyard Gothic, ed. Eric Parisot, David McAllister, and Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester University Press, forthcoming)
with Elizabeth Neiman. "Introduction: Biography and the Woman Writer Revisited." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 52 (2023): 291-297.
"Somebody's Complaint: Isabella Kelly, Warren Hastings, and the Strange Case of Ruthinglenne." Eighteenth-Century Life 46.2 (2022): 113–142.
"What 'Poor Mrs. Kelly' Saw: Isabella Kelly Reads The Monk." Women's Authorship and the Early Gothic: Innovations and Legacies, ed. Kathleen Hudson. University of Wales Press, 2020, pp. 65-87.
"Isabella Kelly and the Minerva Gothic Challenge." Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840 23 (2020), http://www.romtext.org.uk/articles/rt23_n10/.
"The Gothic Novel Beyond Radcliffe and Lewis." The Cambridge History of the Gothic, ed. Dale Townshend, Angela Wright and Catherine Spooner. Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 323-344.
"An End to Wandering? Jonas B. Phillips and Mary Shelley's 'The Evil Eye.'" Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 15.2 (2017): 217-239.
Beyond the Radcliffe 'Formula': Isabella Kelly and the Gothic Troubles of the Married Heroine." Women's Writing (2015), DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2015.1110289
"'Whatever Bigots Say': Isaac Harby's The Gordian Knot and the Anti-Catholic Gothic." Studies in American Jewish Literature 33.1 (2014): 107-129.
“Shakespeare, The Castle of Otranto, and the Problem of the Corpse on the Eighteenth-Century Stage.” Eighteenth-Century Life 36.1 (2012): 1-29.
with Miranda M,. Yaggi. “Introduction. Notes on a Margin: British Women Writers and Acts of Annotation.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 8/2 (2010): 229-234.
“Hairball Speaks: Margaret Atwood and the Narrative Legacy of the Female Grotesque.” Narrative 18/1 (2010): 51-72.
“Into the Madman’s Dream: The Gothic Abduction of Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespearean Gothic, ed. Christy Desmet and Anne Williams. University of Wales Press, 2009, 133-54.
“The Horror of the Popular Author: Stephen King and the Taint of the Low.” Canonical and Popular: Literary Dialogues, ed. Shapira et. al. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007. 135-145. (Hebrew)
with Omri Herzog and Tamar S. Hess. “Introduction.” Canonical and Popular: Literary Dialogues, ed. Shapira et. Al. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007. 7-18. (Hebrew)
“Where the Bodies are Hidden: Ann Radcliffe’s ‘Delicate’ Gothic.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 18/4 (Summer 2006): 453–476.
Database Entries
Isabella Kelly, Madeline, or the Castle of Montgomery (1794); Joseclina, or, the Rewards of Benevolence (1798); Eva (1799). Entries for database accompanying The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820, ed. April London (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
Book Reviews – Academic
Dale Townshend, Gothic Antiquity: History, Romance, and the Architectural Imagination, 1760-1840. Common Knowledge 27.3 (2021): 488-89.
Diana Wallace, Female Gothic Histories: Gender, History and the Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2013). Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 15.1 (2017): 189-192.
Angela Wright, Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764-1820: The Import of Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Common Knowledge 21.3 (2015): 520.
Cynthia Sundberg Wall, The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 7/2 (June 2009), 352-56.
Juliet McMaster, Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 3/1 (January 2005), 168–173.
Book Reviews - Other
Jennifer Weiner, Best Friends Forever. Haaretz English Edition Book Supplement, January 2010
Chris Bohjalian, Skeletons at the Feast. Haaretz English Edition Book Supplement, January 2009
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Haaretz Book Supplement, December 2005 (Hebrew)
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife. Haaretz Book Supplement, October 2005
Media
- Researchgate profile
- Academia.edu profile
Last Updated Date : 08/06/2023
