Francesca Sawaya

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

A perspicacious critic of American literature and culture, Francesca Sawaya has been making her mark as both a teacher and a scholar of the field. An assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, her recent publications include an essay on Jane Addams and an essay on Naturalism. Before going joining the faculty at the University of Oklahoma, Sawaya was an assistant professor at Portland State University and at Illinois State University, a lecturer at Cornell University, and a visiting assistant professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Currently, Sawaya is working on a book entitled “The Work of Modernity: Domesticity, Professionalism, and Social Reform.” She will focus on fiction, yet also examine letters, journals, speeches, and academic monographs in order to trace the specific ways that woman intellectuals combined discourses of domesticity and professionalism in order to reform both.

Sawaya earned her PhD in English from Cornell University. She has received numerous honors and distinctions, including an NEH Summer Stipend, a Portland State University Faculty Enhancement Grant, an Illinois State University Summer Research Grant, and a Clark Distinguished Teaching Award from Cornell University. She was the recipient of three Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities.