{"id":6437,"date":"2018-08-29T15:35:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T19:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=6437"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:58:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T17:58:06","slug":"erin-murphy","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/profile\/erin-murphy\/","title":{"rendered":"Erin Murphy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a complete CV, please <a href=\"\/english\/files\/2018\/08\/Murphy-CV-5.11.26.pdf\">click here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My research and teaching interests center on the intersection of literature and politics, with primary areas of focus in seventeenth-century English literature, and gender and sexuality studies more broadly. My first book, <em>Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century England<\/em>, investigated how writers from across the political spectrum explored the promise and the threats of using family as a means to stabilize politics. Moving beyond the much-discussed patriarchal analogy, this study drew on feminist and queer theory to illuminate the temporal stakes of family politics, giving particular attention to the explicit and implicit debates over genealogy as a literary and governmental form. I am completing a book project, <em>Wartimes: Seventeenth-Century English Women\u2019s Writing<\/em>, which deploys an inter-historical approach, reconsidering the writing of seventeenth-century women in relation to the English civil wars, as well as the ways that this writing has been appropriated during other moments of war, including our own moment of global conflict. I have also co-edited a collection of interdisciplinary and theoretical essays entitled <em>Milton Now<\/em>, which expands discussions of Milton beyond the dominant historicist paradigm while simultaneously engaging wider questions about the current state of literary studies. My work in sexuality studies includes the co-editing of a special issue of <em>Criticism<\/em> on the work of Eve Sedgwick. I have also published a suite of essays on Milton and queer studies, including the forthcoming, \u201cWho is listening?: Alice Egerton, <em>A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle<\/em>, and Queer Erotics<em>.\u201d<\/em> In addition to offering undergraduate and graduate classes in English, I teach both the undergraduate class WS 101 and the theories and methods graduate seminar in the Women\u2019s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, as well as CC201 in the Core Curriculum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Books<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature<\/em>, (University of Delaware Press, 2011).<\/li>\n<li><em>Milton Now: Alternative Approaches and Contexts, (Palgrave, 2014).\u00a0 Collection of interdisciplinary and theoretical essays on the work of John Milton inspired by the twenty-fifth anniversary of the groundbreaking volume, Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions.\u00a0 Co-edited with Catharine Gray.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Wartimes: Seventeenth-Century Women\u2019s Writing and its Afterlives <\/em>(book project)<em> \u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Special Issue<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Honoring Eve: Essays on the Work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick<\/em>. <em>Criticism<\/em> 52.2 (Spring 2010).\u00a0 Co-edited with J. Keith Vincent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cImagining It Was Otherwise: Cavendish and Milton,\u201d in\u00a0<em>Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature<\/em>, eds. Matthew Augustine and Steven Zwicker (Oxford University Press, 2025), 321-338.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhen your body is a battlefield: Lucy Hutchinson and the Militarized Womb,\u201d\u00a0in special issue on Lucy Hutchinson,\u00a0<em>The Seventeenth Century<\/em>, 38:3,\u00a0(2023), 475-483<\/li>\n<li>\u201cTouches Across Time: Queer Feminism and Early Modern \u2018Women\u2019s\u2019 Writing,\u201d commissioned for <em>Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women\u2019s Writing,<\/em> eds. Sara E. Ross and Elizabeth Scott-Bauman (Oxford University Press, forthcoming September 2022), 717-733.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cErotic Origins: Genesis, the Passion, and Aemilia Lanyer\u2019s Queer Temporality,\u201d in <em>Worldmaking Women: New Perspectives on the Centrality of Women in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Culture,<\/em> eds. Pamela Hammons and Brandie Siegfried (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 19-37.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cRude Milton: Gender, Sexuality, and the Missing Middle of Milton Studies,\u201d in <em>Queer Milton<\/em>, edited by David Orvis (Palgrave, 2018), 1-41.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cRadical Relations: The Genealogical Imaginary and Queer Kinship in Milton\u2019s <em>Paradise Regained<\/em>,\u201d in <em>One First Matter All:\u00a0 New Essays on Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment<\/em>, edited by Kevin Donovan and Thomas Festa (Duquesne Press, 2017), 81-107.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c\u2018I remain, an airy phantasm\u2019: Lucy Hutchinson\u2019s Civil War Ghost Writing,\u201d <em>ELH: English Literary History, <\/em>82:1 (Spring 2015), 87-113.<\/li>\n<li><em>\u201cIntroduction,\u201d co-written with Catharine Gray, in Milton Now: Alternative Approaches and Contexts, eds. Catharine Gray and Erin Murphy (Palgrave, 2014), 1-25.\u00a0 <\/em><\/li>\n<li>\u201cWar Times: Seventeenth-Century Women\u2019s Writing and its Afterlives,\u201d in <em>Rethinking\u00a0Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton<\/em>, eds. Ann Coiro and Thomas Fulton (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 257-82.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<em>Paradise Lost<\/em> and the Politics of Begetting,\u201d <em>Milton Quarterly<\/em>, (March 2011), 25-49.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cSabrina and the Making of English History in <em>Poly-Olbion<\/em> and <em>A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle<\/em>,\u201d <em>Studies in English Literature<\/em>, 51, 1 (Winter 2011), 87-110.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIntroduction,\u201d co-written with J. Keith Vincent in \u201cHonoring Eve: Essays on the Work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,\u201d <em>Criticism<\/em> 52.2 (Spring 2010), eds. Erin Murphy and J. Keith Vincent, 159-76.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cInfectious Knowledge: Teaching John Milton\u2019s <em>Of Education<\/em> and Mary Astell\u2019s <em>A\u00a0Serious Proposal to the Ladies<\/em>,\u201d in <em>Teaching Early Modern Prose<\/em>, eds. Margaret Ferguson and Susannah Monta (Modern Language Association, February 2010), 659-76.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMilton\u2019s \u2018Birth Abortive\u2019: Remaking Family at the End of <em>Paradise Lost<\/em>,\u201d in <em>Milton\u00a0Studies<\/em> 43, ed. Albert C. Labriola (Pittsburgh, 2004), 145-70.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Works in Progress<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cBodies at War,\u201d in\u00a0<em>Margaret Cavendish and John Milton: Rethinking Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture<\/em>, eds. Ann Baynes Coiro, Lara Dodds, and Lisa Walters (Oxford University, forthcoming)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWho is listening?:\u00a0 Alice Egerton,\u00a0<em>A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle<\/em>, and Queer Erotics,\u201d for\u00a0<em>More Equal: New Essays on John Milton and Lucy Hutchinson<\/em>, eds. David Ainsworth and Tom Festa (Clemson University Press, forthcoming)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCheering Across Time: Feminist Alliance, Identification and the Challenges of Difference in the West End Emilia,\u201d essay commissioned for <em>Challenging Paradigms: Early Modern Women Writers and Convention<\/em>, eds. Katherine Gillespie, Meghan Matchinske, Mihoko Suzuki, and Joanne Wright. In process.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIntroduction to Lucy Hutchinson\u2019s <em>Order and Disorder<\/em>,\u201d for the Women Writers Project for the <em>Women Writers in Context Series<\/em>. In process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Select Honors and Awards<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>President, Milton Society of America, 2025-2026.<\/li>\n<li>Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit\u00e4t, Munich, Germany, July 2025.<\/li>\n<li>Jeffrey Henderson Senior Fellowship, Boston University Humanities Center, Fall 2021<\/li>\n<li>Elected Member, Northeast Milton Seminar, June 2020<\/li>\n<li>NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities, Boston University, 2017-2020<\/li>\n<li>Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2016. University-wide teaching prize.<\/li>\n<li>Jeffrey Henderson Senior Research Fellowship, BU Center for the Humanities, (Spring 2015)<\/li>\n<li>Boston University English Department Commencement Speaker, 2013<\/li>\n<li>David Kalstone Memorial Award for Best First Book, 2007. \u00a0Rutgers University Department of English.<\/li>\n<li>Folger Institute Grant-in-Aid, Spring 2006<\/li>\n<li>Boston University Humanities Foundation Junior Fellowship, Fall 2005<\/li>\n<li>Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture Graduate Fellowship,\u00a01999-2000<\/li>\n<li>New York City Urban Fellowship, 1993-1994<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":12176,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10213,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6437\/revisions\/10213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}