Laura Doyle

Short Biography

Laura Doyle’s research focuses on transnational, intercultural formations of literary history, with attention to the political and bodily dialectics shaping these formations. Building on her specialization in African-Atlantic and Anglo-Atlantic literatures, especially the novel and modernism, she has recently turned to Anglophone literature more broadly to consider the impact of eastern literary forms on western cultures and to explore the implications for 20th-century Anglophone literature. She has secondary interests in existential phenomenology as a philosophy and as a historical movement. In addition to numerous essays, Doyle has published two literary-historical monographs: Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture (Oxford 1994, Perkins Prize Award) and Freedom’s Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640–1940 (Duke 2008). She is also editor of two essay collections: Bodies of Resistance: New Phenomenologies of Politics, Agency, and Culture (Northwestern 2001) and, with Laura Winkiel, Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (Indiana 2004). Doyle is the recipient of two ACLS Fellowships, one Rockefeller Fellowship for Intercultural Studies at Princeton University, a prize for her first book, and the UMass CHFA Outstanding Teacher Award. At UMass-Amherst, she is Professor of English and has served as the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Personnel in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.