Devoney Looser

Devoney Looser is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where she specializes in 18th- and early 19th-century British literature and culture, particularly women’s writing and Jane Austen. She received her Ph.D. in English with certification in Women’s Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1993 and her B.A. summa cum laude with English Honors from Augsburg College in 1989. Looser’s distinguished career includes prior appointments as Foundation Professor of English at ASU since 2018, Professor of English at ASU from 2013 to 2018, Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of English at the University of Missouri in 2012–2013, and earlier positions at the University of Missouri, Louisiana State University, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Indiana State University starting in 1993.

A prolific scholar, Looser is the author or editor of twelve books, including Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane (St. Martin’s Press, 2025), Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës (Bloomsbury, 2022), The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), and British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). She has edited notable volumes such as the Cambridge Companion to Women’s Writing in the Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Her scholarship has earned prestigious fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award in 2018, Huntington Library NEH Long-Term Fellowship for 2024–2025, and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency in 2021. Additional honors include the ASU Founders’ Day Faculty Research Achievement Award in 2020 and Choice Outstanding Academic Titles for several works. Looser’s contributions extend to public writing in outlets like The New York Times and The Atlantic, and she serves on ASU’s President’s Academic Council, influencing the field of Literature through her rigorous archival research and engaging public humanities.

Professional Email: devoney.looser@asu.edu