BIO Dr. Erin Penner joined the English Department at Asbury after a research fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and doctoral work at Cornell University. She specializes in British and American modernism, with additional interest in African-American literature, literature of mourning, and war writing. Her first book, Character and Mourning: Woolf, Faulkner, and the Novel Elegy of the First World War (UVA), established her ongoing interest in the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. Her current book project, currently titled Foul-Mouthed Modernism: The First World War and the Future of Swearing (Johns Hopkins), explores the long-term effects of trench talk on soldiers and civilians. She is also co-editing Virginia Woolf and the Elements (Edinburgh) with Marlene Dirschauer, which features the work of more than a dozen Woolfians, ecocritics, and modernist scholars. That ought to keep her out of trouble for a while. Education Ph.D., English, Cornell University M.A., English, Cornell University B.A., English, Yale University, magna cum laude Academic Appointments Professor of English, Asbury University, Wilmore, KY, 2025- Associate Professor of English, Asbury University, Wilmore, KY, 2018–2025 Assistant Professor of English, Asbury University, Wilmore, KY, 2013-2018 Postdoctoral Visiting Research Fellow, Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 2012 Publications Books Foul-Mouthed Modernism: The First World War and the Future of Swearing. Under contract for the Hopkins Studies in Modernism series, Johns Hopkins University Press. (Ed.) Virginia Woolf and the Elements, co-edited with Marlene Dirschauer. Under contract for the Virginia Woolf – Variations series, Edinburgh University Press. Character and Mourning: Woolf, Faulkner, and the Novel Elegy of the First World War. University of Virginia Press, 2019. Articles “Swearing Like a Soldier in the Domestic Battles of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.” The Faulkner Journal. Forthcoming. “Faulknerian Evolution: Unsettled Maps and Genealogies in As I Lay Dying.” In Anniversaries: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2024. Ed. Jay Watson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Forthcoming. “Reading the Portable Faulkner through Digital Yoknapatawpha: Recovering the ‘Problems’ and ‘Difficulties’ of ‘Compson Appendix 1699-1945.’” In Digitizing Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Theresa Towner. University of Virginia Press, 2022. “More than Running: Redefining Movement in Go Down, Moses.” In Faulkner and Slavery: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2018. Ed. Jay Watson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. 91-104. “Modernist Moonlight: Illuminating the Post-War Dread of Flags in the Dust.” Mississippi Quarterly 72.4 (2020): 503-520. “Grounding ‘Pantaloon in Black’ in Faulkner Country.” Teaching Faulkner 38 (Fall 2020). “‘Curse This War’: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Profanity.” Modernism/modernity 26.4 (2019): 849-868. “A Response to Addie Bundren: Restoring Generosity to the Language of Civil Discourse in Marilynne Robinson’s Lila.” Studies in the Novel 50.2 (Summer 2018): 277-298. “For Those ‘Who Could Not Bear to Look Directly at the Slaughter’: Morrison’s Home and the Novels of Faulkner and Woolf.” African-American Review 49.4 (Winter 2016): 343-359. “Fighting for Black Grief: Exchanging the Civil War for Civil Rights in Go Down, Moses.” Mississippi Quarterly 67.3 (Summer 2014): 403-427. “The Order of a Smashed Window-Pane: Novel Elegy in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.” Twentieth-Century Literature 61.1 (2015): 63-91. “Speaking of the Dead and the Speaking Dead.” Journal of American Studies 49.1 (2015): E2. “Making No Apologies for Difficulty: Putting Modernist Form at the Center of Classroom Discussions.” Journal of Modern Literature 37.2 (Winter 2014): 1-19. “Mapping the Search for Consolation in Mrs. Dalloway.” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 83 (2013): 23-25. “Crowding Clarissa’s Garden.” Virginia Woolf and the Natural World: Selected Papers from the Twentieth International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Kristin Czarnecki and Carrie Rohman. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2011. Digital Humanities Projects Senior collaborating editor, Digital Yoknapatawpha. Directed by Stephen Railton. University of Virginia. (2012-) Recent Presentations “Burying Mother Earth: Woolf’s Liberation from Domesticated Metaphor” Woolf and Dissidence: International Virginia Woolf Society Conference (July 2025) “Faulknerian Evolution: Unsettled Maps and Genealogies in As I Lay Dying” Faulknerian Anniversaries: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July 2024) “Sylvia Pankhurst to Sylvia Tietjens: Reinventing the Language You Live In” Innovation and Re-invention in the Space Between (June 2024) “The Not So Quiet Future of Women” Modernist Studies Association (October 2022) “DH: Reshaping the Pedagogy of Modernist Difficulty” Modernist Studies Association (October 2022) “The Digital Topography of Post-War Dread in Flags in the Dust.” Faulkner’s Modernisms: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July 2022) “Meaning that Does Not Travel: Profanity as a Litmus Test for Global Modernism.” Modernist Studies Association (April 2022) “Watch Your Language: Black Writers and the Power of a Curse.” Asbury University (September 2021) “DY When You Only Know One Faulkner Story.” Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Mississippi Confluence (July 2021) “The Sharp Edge of a Jest: Blackness and the Language of the Trenches.” Race in the Space Between, 1914-1945 (June 2021) “Abandoning the Desire for ‘Wholeness’: Digital Yoknapatawpha and the ‘Compson Appendix.’” Faulkner’s Families: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July 2019) “Reading the War: Haldane’s Narrative Persona and Theories of Time.” Modernist Studies Association (November 2018) “The Rhetoric of Redeeming Technology: the To-day and To-morrow Series.” Modernist Studies Association (November 2018) “Turning Back to Predict the Future: Scientific Projections from a Century Ago.” Asbury University (October 2018) “More than Running: Redefining Movement in Go Down, Moses.” Faulkner and Slavery: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July 2018) “Not Sticks, Stones, or Deeds: the Words of Women’s Suffrage.” Intersections of Resistance in the Space Between, 1914-1945 (June 2018) “Building a Future on Profanity: Robert Graves’s Lars Porsena: Or the Future of Swearing.” Memory and Prophecy in the Space Between, 1914-1945 (May 2017) “The Impious and Impolite: The Real Poetry of Profanity.” David Jones: Dialogues with the Past (July 2016) “The Curse of the War.” Virginia Woolf Conference: Virginia Woolf and Heritage (June 2016) Contact Erin Penner FacebookThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Your name(Required)Your email address(Required) Subject line:(Required)Message:(Required)FacStaff Email (please keep hidden) FacStaff Slug (please keep hidden)