Elizabeth Abel (born 1945) is an American literary scholar who, as of 2024, holds the John F. Hotchkis Chair in English at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Biography

Abel holds the John F. Hotchkis Chair in English at the

. She was an assistant professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Research and writing

Abel gives her research areas (as of 2024) as "gender and sexuality, psychoanalysis, and twentieth-century fiction" particularly

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

, and "race, cultural studies, and visuality". In 1981 she was guest editor for a special issue of ''

Critical Inquiry ''Critical Inquiry'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Department of English Language and Literature (University of Chicago). While the topics and historica ...

'', 'Writing and Sexual Difference'. According to Kathryn West in Abel's entry in the ''Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory'', the essays marked a shift in

feminist literary theory Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to an ...

from "recovering a lost tradition to discovering the terms of confrontation with the dominant tradition", by means of "specific historical studies of the ways women revise prevailing themes and styles". Abel's ''Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis'' (1989), an "important study" of the author Virginia Woolf, relates Woolf's work to 1920s

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

and the

psychoanalytic theories Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of the innate structure of the human soul and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a method of research and for treating of mental disorders (psychopathology). Laid ...

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

and

Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (; ; Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Kl ...

. According to the academic Lisa Ruddick, Abel shows that Woolf "absorbed many of Freud's insights" on gender identity, but simultaneously "inflected them in a manner that we would now call feminist". Her later books include ''Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow'' (2010), a "well-researched, insightful book" on the "aesthetics of signs" associated with

racial segregation in the United States Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States based on racial categorizations. Notably, racial segregation in the United States was the leg ...

; in a generally positive review for ''

The Journal of American History ''The Journal of American History'' is the quarterly official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'', the of ...

'', Christopher P. Lehman criticizes Abel for failing to interview surviving activists. Ulrich Adelt describes the book as the "first comprehensive study" of the subject but writes that it "occasionally borders on over-interpretation" of the images analyzed.

Works

;Authored books * ''Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. * ''Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. * ''Odd Affinities: Virginia Woolf's Shadow Genealogies''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. ;Edited books * (ed.) ''Writing and Sexual Difference''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. * (ed. with

Marianne Hirsch Marianne Hirsch (born September 23, 1949) is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative literature, Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. ...

and Elizabeth Langland) ''The Voyage in: fictions of female development''. Hanover, NH : Published for Dartmouth College by University Press of New England, 1983 * (ed. with Emily K. Abel) ''The Signs reader: women, gender, & scholarship''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. * (ed. with

Barbara Christian Barbara T. Christian (December 12, 1943 – June 25, 2000) was an American author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and more than 100 published articles, Christian was be ...

and Helene Moglen) ''Female subjects in black and white: race, psychoanalysis, feminism''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abel, ELizabeth 1945 births Living people American feminist writers University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty American academics of English literature University of Chicago faculty