Jennifer Minnen

Jennifer Minnen

Jennifer Minnen

Research/Areas of Interest

Expository Writing
Victorian Literature and Culture
Environmental Humanities
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Education

  • PhD English, Princeton University, Princeton, United States, 2020
  • MA English, Princeton University, Princeton, United States, 2015
  • MA Teaching, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, United States, 2006
  • BA Art History, Wesleyan University, Middletown, United States, 1999

Biography

Jennifer's scholarship focuses on the intersection of gender and science in Victorian literature. Her dissertation, titled "The Second Science: Feminist Natural Inquiry in Nineteenth-Century British Literature," argues that women writers used the daily work of natural history—specimen collection, correspondence, and exchange—to challenge public discourse surrounding "The Woman Question." Digging into botanical, zoological, and literary archives, the project highlights the egalitarian exchange networks that informed scientific practice and the material and literary forms through which such practices developed, revealing the porousness of our entrenched paradigms of domesticity and scientific professionalism.

Jennifer has taught undergraduate writing at Princeton University and courses on writing, literary history, and feminism(s) at Queens College, City University of New York. She now lives and gardens in Somerville.