Alison Conway, PhD

Professor

English and Cultural Studies, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Other Titles: Associate Dean, Research, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies - Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Office: LM4 620
Email: alison.conway@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Literary and cultural history of the long eighteenth century in Britain; narrative studies; and gender and sexuality theory.

Courses & Teaching

English; Gender & Women Studies

Biography

Alison Conway is the author Private Interests: Women, Portraiture, and the Visual Culture of the English Novel, 1709-1791 (2001), The Protestant Whore: Courtesan Narrative and Religious Controversy in England, 1680-1750 (2010) and Sacred Engagements: Interfaith Marriage, Religious Toleration, and the British Novel, 1750-1820 (2023). (You can listen to a UBCO Library Frequencies podcast about this book project here.)

She is co-editor, with Mary Helen McMurran, of Mind, Body, Motion, Matter: Eighteenth-Century French and Literary Perspectives (2016)  and co-editor, with David Alvarez, of Imagining Religious Toleration: A Literary History of an Idea, 1660-1830 (2019).

Professor Conway is Past President of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and currently a Trustee for the Women’s Caucus of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. She serves on the Editorial Board of Eighteenth-Century Fiction and on the Advisory Board of Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Since 2017, Alison Conway has been writing, as a guest contributor for the blog, Fit is a Feminist Issue, about how a late immersion into the world of sport has shaped her thinking about feminism, politics, and the body.

Degrees

PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1994; MA, York University, 1988; BA, UBC, 1987

Research Interests & Projects

Recent essays on religious studies and literature have appeared in LICO, Lumen, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and Reflections on Sentiment: Essays in Honour of George Starr.

Selected Grants & Awards

SSHRC Insight Grant, 2015-19

SSHRC Connections Grant, 2016-17

Western’s Faculty Scholar Award (2015)

Western’s Fellowship in Teaching Innovation, with Dr. M. McDayter (2013)

Graham and Gale Wright Distinguished Scholar Award (2012)

Huntington Library Fellowships (1999, 2012)

SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2000-3)

Bank of Nova Scotia, UWO Alumni Association and the University Students’ Council Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2000)

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Fellowship (2000)

Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching (1999)