Department of English
Department of English
Anna Brickhouse

Anna Brickhouse

Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English
Email: acb2hf@virginia.edu
434 924-6609
Specialties
Early and Nineteenth-Century American, Transamerican Studies, Medical Humanities
Office Address/Hours

Bryan Hall 411 / On leave spring 2026.

Degrees

  • Ph.D. Columbia, 1998
  • M.A. Columbia, 1992
  • B.A. University of Virginia, 1990

Books

Edited Works

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and Empire, co-edited with Susan Gillman. (in production, forthcoming 2026)

Recent Articles

  • “Predatory Optimism,” ELH, 2025.
  • “Afterword: Translational Historicism,” special issue on translation and mistranslation, Colonial Latin American Review, 2024.
  • “Hemispheric Literary Networks and José Martí's ‘El Terremoto de Charleston,’” Routledge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Latin America, 2024.
  • “American Literary Catastrophism,” American Literary History, 2022.
  • “Celeste Eng's Little Fires Everywhere and the Burning of American Literature,” in Race and American Literature and Culture (Cambridge, 2022).
  • “Melville in the Torrid Zone,” Leviathan, 2021.
  • “Earthquake History of the Americas,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2021.
  • “Earthquake and Whale,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. Johns Hopkins UP, 2018.
  • “En Homenaje a Latinx Studies: from Charlottesville, August, 2017,” Special Issue on Latinx Studies, English Language Notes, Duke UP, 2018.
  • “Unsettling World Literature,” PMLA, 2017.

Honors

  • 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 2015 James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association
  • 2015 Early American Literature Book Award, Society of Early Americanists, and the MLA's Division on American Literature to 1800.
  • 2015 Honorable Mention for the John Hope Franklin Best Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association
  • 2012 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship
  • 2005 Gustave Arlt Award for Best First Book in the Humanities, Council of Graduate Schools
  • 2005 Honorable Mention for the Lora Romero Award for Best First Book, American Studies Association

Recent Invited Lectures

  • “Fictionalizing Revolutionary American Histories” symposium (Brown, Fall 2025)
  • Talk for “Conquest and Compost” symposium (Dortmund University, Germany, Summer 2025)
  • Literature and Politics symposium, UBC Vancouver (Fall 2024)
  • Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar (Fall 2023-Spring 2024)
  • English Institute (Fall 2023)
  • Americanist Colloquium, Columbia English (Spring 2022)
  • Plenary Lecture for Transatlantic Studies Association annual conference and Mayflower Lecture sponsored by Plymouth University on 400th anniversary of Mayflower crossing (Lisbon 2020; rescheduled for 2021)
  • Ballew Lecture, University of Georgia (November 2019)
  • Translating America/America Translated Symposium, UC Santa Cruz (February 2019)
  • Leonora Woodman Memorial Lecture, Purdue (September 2018)
  • Early Americas Seminar lecture, Boston College (March 2018)
  • Kanner Lecture, UCLA (February 2018)
  • Plenary Lecture at Oxford, for Melville Society (June 2017)
  • Plenary Lecture for The Global Enlightenment, Princeton (April 2017)
  • Americanist Colloquium, Yale English (March 2017)

Selected Service

Interim Chair of German (Fall 2023-Aug 2025); Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program, board member (2025-ongoing); Director of American Studies (2015-2018), Co-Director of the Americas Center (2016-2018), Series co-editor, Writing the Early Americas, University of Virginia Press (2016-present)*, American Literature Society (2014-2017); MLA, Program Committee (2013-2016); Nineteenth-Century American Division Committee, Modern Language Association (2007-2011); American Quarterly Advisory Board (2008-2014); C19 Advisory Board (2008-2016); ESQ Advisory Board (2011-present); Nineteenth-Century Literature Advisory Board (2007-present); ELN advisory board (2011-present); Director of Undergraduate Studies, UVA English (2009-2012); Director of Distinguished Majors Program, UVA English (2007-2009), UVA Press Board (2015-2018)

Book series

Writing the Early Americas, founding coeditor with Kirsten Silva Gruesz, University of Virginia Press

Selected Titles:

  • Bauer, Ralph. The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World, 2019. (MLA Scaglione prize in Comparative Literary Studies)
  • Braun, Juliane. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans, 2019. (Theatre Library Association, George Freedley Memorial Award)
  • Lazo, Rodrigo. Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite, 2020. (SEA Early American Literature book prize)
  • Mucher, Christen. Before American History: Nationalist Mythmaking and Indigenous Dispossession, 2022.
  • Grier, Miles P. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery, 2023. (SEA Early American Literature Book Prize and Shakespeare Association of America First Book Award)
  • Goldmark, Matthew. Forms of Relation: Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America, 2023.
  • Tsien, Jennifer. Rumors of Revolution: Song, Sentiment, and Sedition in Colonial Louisiana, 2023.
  • Hill, Ruth. Reckoning With Race in New Worlds, forthcoming 2026.