
Sarah F. Gracombe
Professor of English, Director of the Moreau Honors Program
Biography
Sarah Gracombe is a Professor of English and the Director of the Moreau Honors Program. Previously, she served for five years as the Director of the IDEAS (Integrating Democratic Education at Stonehill) Program. Her teaching and research interests include Victorian representations of national identity, race, gender, psychology, and religion, particularly constructions of Jewishness.
This research has been supported by organizations including the University of Pennsylvania's Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, the Whiting Foundation, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her work has appeared in journals such as Nineteenth-Century Literature, Philological Quarterly, Romantic Circles, Prooftexts, Victorian Periodical Review and the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, as well as the collections George Du Maurier: Illustrator, Author, Critic (Ashgate 2016) and Bastards and Believers: Jewish Converts and Conversion from the Bible to the Present (University of Pennsylvania Press 2020). Her current project is Reimagining Ruth: the Book of Ruth in English and American Culture, 1800-1940.
Education
- Ph.D., Columbia University, 2005
- B.A., Brown University, 1995
Accomplishments
- Director, IDEAS Program (2015-2020)
- Faculty Advisor to Stonehill’s English Society and founder of the annual Undergraduate Literature Conference with Bridgewater State University and University of Massachusetts Boston (2005-2015)
- Fellow, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania (2010-11)
- Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Grant (2004)
- Whiting Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2004)
- SURE grants for summer research collaborations with students (2009, 2013, 2016)
Courses Taught
- Fictions of Englishness
- Crimes and Misdemeanors in Victorian Literature and Culture
- The British Novel and Psychology, 1800-1920
- “Hunger, Rebellion, and Rage”: The Woman Question in British Literature, 1800-1930
- Jane Austen, 1775-2012
- “What Ghosts Can Say”: Tales of Invisible Men and Women
- Americans Abroad
- Fiction: Narrating Self and Society
- Democratic Education (IDEAS seminar)
- Fictions of Jewishness and Englishness
Areas of Expertise
Titles
Professor of English, Director of the Moreau Honors Program
Departments
English