Laura Fairchild Brodie Visiting Associate Professor of English
Payne 203
540-458-5896
brodiel@wlu.edu
Website
Education
Ph.D., English, University of Virginia
M.A., English, University of Virginia
B.A., English, Harvard University
Research
Eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century literature
Teaching
WRIT 100-First Year Writing Seminar: Wicked Women
ENG 203 Creative Writing, Fiction
ENG 292 and 293, Modern British and American Poetry
ENGL 285-Reading Lolita in Lexington
ENGL 299-Becoming Jane
ENGL 334-Eighteenth-Century Poetry
ENG 413--Pulitzer Prize-Winning Fiction
Fiction Faculty, Taos Summer Writers' Conference
Summer Faculty, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing
Selected Publications
Books
Novel. All the Truth. Berkley Books and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2012.
Memoir. Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter's Uncommon Year. Harper, 2010, Harper Perennial 2011.
Novel. The Widow's Season. Berkley Books, 2009. Ich Weiss, Du Bist Hier. 2010. Der Spiegel Bestseller in Germany for 28 weeks.
Nonfiction. Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women. NY: Pantheon Books, 2000; NY: Vintage Books, 2001.
Articles, stories, and reviews
“Harvard and the Cult of Robert E. Lee,” Harvard Magazine, January 2022.
“What They Say When They Fly the Gadsden Flag,” op-ed, The New York Daily News, November 2021.
“Christ and the Confederates,” Center for Religion and the Human, Indiana University, October 2021.
“Defund VMI? Not so Fast,” op-ed, The Washington Post, July 22, 2021.
“Myths of Chivalry,” Magazine of the Museum of Modern Art, January 14, 2021.
“The Toxic Masculinity of Civil War Monuments,” op-ed, The Washington Post, June 19, 2020.
"Wollstonecraft's Widow," forthcoming in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 2017.
"A Lesson from Jane," Personal Essay, Tin House, 2014.
"Spiderman Summer." anthologized in the Bedford Introduction to Literature, 2013. First published in Shenandoah (Spring 2008).
Review of Marching in Step: Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Citadel in Post-World War II America. Journal of Military History (October 2011).
Op Ed. "Virginia's ______ Tests. Answer: Flawed." Washington Post (1 March 2009)
Essay. "One Good Year: A Look at Short-Term Homeschooling." Brain, Child (March 2007).
Review of Life after Death: Widows and the English Novel, Defoe to Austen. Journal of British Studies 45.4 (Oct. 2006).
Op Ed. "Pregnant on the Parade Ground." Washington Post (2003).
"Jane Austen and the Common Reader." Texas Studies in Literature and Language (Spring 1995).
"Society and the Superfluous Female: Jane Austen's Treatment of Widows." Studies in English Literature (Autumn 1994).
"An Interview with Amy Clampitt." American Poetry Review (1987).