Amanda Anderson is the Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature, and the head of the English department at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

.

Life

She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and taught at the University of Illinois

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 before coming to Hopkins in 1999.
She specializes in Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 literature and contemporary literary, cultural, and political theory

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

. Her work on the Victorian period has focused on the relation between forms of modern thought and knowledge (across both literature and the human sciences) and understandings of selfhood, social life, and ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

.

Her most recent book, The Way We Argue Now, analyzes a number of influential theoretical debates over the past decade or so, with special attention to the forms of argument that shape work in pragmatism

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...

, feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...

, and proceduralism.

At Hopkins, her recent graduate teaching has included courses on forms of argument in contemporary theory; Victorian internationalism; Victorian realism; and ethics and aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 in Victorian literature. She has taught undergraduate courses on Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

 and Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...

, nineteenth-century British fiction, and Victorian poetry and nonfiction prose.

Works

• Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture Cornell University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-8014-2781-7