Bio
Carrie Shanafelt
Bio
Carrie Shanafelt
Carrie Shanafelt is Lecturer of c18-19 British and American Literature at Yeshiva University. She has published in Revue d’études benthamiennes, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, CEA Forum, and volumes on Samuel Johnson and David Hume. Her book Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste is available from University of Virginia Press. She is writing a second book on Atlantic slavery and finance in the eighteenth century. She is the philosophy reviews editor for the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the 2024-25 chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Eighteenth-Century European Culture, and the Treasurer of the Johnsonians.
Forthcoming Publications
“Ottobah Cugoano on British Slavery, National Debt, and Speculative Finance,” Journal of Modern Philosophy
Ph.D. 2011
City university of New York
M.A. 2003
Case Western Reserve university
B.A. 2001
Case Western Reserve University
Email Carrie Shanafelt
Campus Profile
Curriculum Vitae (as of 9/2024)
Carrie grew up in Shawnee, Kansas, and moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1997 for college, where she studied Spanish and English literatures and minored in Political Science. She continued at CWRU to write an M.A. thesis on rhetoric and Henry Fielding. In 2003, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, to study at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her 2011 dissertation was "Common Sense: The Rise of Narrative in the Age of Self-Evidence." From 2011 to 2014, she served as a visiting professor at Franklin & Marshall College and Grinnell College before moving back to New York City to begin at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2021. In 2023 she resigned from FDU to begin teaching at Yeshiva College at YU. She lives in the Bronx.
Recent Publications and Lectures
Publications and Lectures
Recent Publications and Lectures
Publications and Lectures
Publications
Books
In progress: A World of Debt: Atlantic Slavery and Public Finance, 1694-1834
Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS (2022)
Reviewed in:
Revue d’études benthamiennes
British Journal of Aesthetics
European Romantic Review
Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Eighteenth-Century Studies
Choice
Editing
Special issue on Queer Utilitarianism for Revue d’études benthamiennes
Articles and chapters
The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson, ed. Jack Lynch, Oxford University Press (2022)
“Jeremy Bentham and the Pleasures of Fiction”
Revue D’Études Benthamiennes 20 (2021)
“‘A World of Debt’: Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, The Wealth of Nations, and the End of Finance”
Eighteenth-Century studies 55.1 (2021)
Received honorable Mention for the 2022 Srinivas Aravamudan Prize
“Jeremy Bentham and the Aesthetics of Sexual Difference”
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 61.3 (2020)
“Against Rights: Jeremy Bentham on Sexual Liberty and Legal Reform”
Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 31.3 (2020)
"The 'Plexed Artistry' of Nabokov and Johnson"
Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists, ed. anthony Lee, clemson Univ. Press (2019)
"On Teaching Gothic Fiction and Non-Empiricist Aesthetics"
College English Association Forum 43.2 (2014)
"Vicarious Sex and the Vulnerable Eighteenth-Century Reader"
Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 24.4 (2014)
"The Rhetoric of Consensus: Hume and Fielding on Moral Sentiment"
David Hume: A Tercentenary Tribute, Ed. stanley Tweyman, Caravan (2013)
Reviews
Of Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London, 1688-1763 by Mattie Burkert
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 56.4 (2023)
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 12.1 (2022)
Of Downward Mobility: The Form of Capital and the Sentimental Novel by Katherine Binhammer
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 11.2 (2021)
Of Making Love: Sentiment and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature by Paul Kelleher
The Shandean 27 (2017)
Of The Impotency Poem from Ancient Latin to Restoration Literature by Hannah Lavery
Renaissance Quarterly 69.2 (2016)
Selected Lectures and Presentations
2024 “Aesthetics and Queer Historiography” with Dustin Friedman, NASSR Seminar
NASSR Romantic INsurrections/Counter-insurrections, Washington, DC
“‘One common Bastille’: Jeremy Bentham on Colonialism and Public Debt”
Utility, Colonies, and Empire, Sciences Po Law School, Centre Bentham, Paris
“Ottobah Cugoano on Financial Speculation Beyond Life”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2024, Toronto
2023 “Ottobah Cugoano on British Slavery, National Debt, and Speculative Finance”
Benedict Workshop on Early Modern Slavery and Philosophy
Boston University, Boston, MA
Invited Lecture: “Jeremy Bentham’s Queer Enlightenment”
Queer Studies and Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
“Jeremy Bentham on Sinister Interest and Queer Aesthetics”
American Society for Aesthetics Rocky Mountain Division
Santa Fe, NM (Paper delivered in absentia due to air travel disruption)
Invited Lecture: “Bentham and Queer Theology”
Swedenborg and Queer Theology public webinar series
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley — remote guest
Roundtable: “Public Debt as Extractive Violence”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St. Louis
“Jeremy Bentham’s Queer Reading”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St. Louis
2022 Invited Lecture: “Quobna Ottobah Cugoano on Slavery’s Moral and Financial Debt”
Global Cultures of the 19c Five college Seminar
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley
Invited Lecture: “Jeremy Bentham on Queer Aesthetics”
Seminar in Eighteenth-Century European Culture
Columbia University, New York City
Invited Lecture: “Ottobah Cugoano”
What’s In a Name Symposium
King’s COllege London, London — remote guest
Panel Chair: “Before Homophobia: Queer Desire in the Restoration” Aphra Behn Society
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Baltimore
Public Lecture: “Jeremy Bentham on Queer Theology and Radical Liberation”
Fairleigh Dickinson University Department Lecture, Teaneck — Remote Lecture
Invited Lecture: “Jeremy Bentham and the Politics of Queer Aesthetics”
Manchester Metropolitan U. PGR/ECR Long 19th Century LGBTQ+ Seminar Keynote
Manchester — Remote Guest
Invited Lecture: “Jeremy Bentham on the Pleasures of the Bed”
Florida Atlantic University, English Dept and Center for WGSS
Boca Raton — Remote Guest
2021 Roundtable: “Jeremy Bentham on Dyslogism and Sexual Nonconformity”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Toronto — Remote Conference
“Quobna Ottobah Cugoano on Debt as Desubjectification”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Toronto — Remote Conference
“Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and the End of Finance”
Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/Werkgroep 18e Eeuw
Amsterdam — Remote Conference
2019 “Sexual Liberty and Happiness”
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Chicago
Invited Lecture: “Cugoano’s Economics: Urban Space and Labor in an Eighteenth-Century Slavery Narrative”
Sophia University Department of English Studies , Tokyo
Roundtable: “A Problematic Period? Teaching the Eighteenth Century”
LiberLit 2019, Seikei University, Tokyo
Invited Lecture: “The Trouble with Bentham” (video)
Theorizing at Rowan, Rowan University, Glassboro
“Against Rights: Jeremy Bentham and the Aesthetics of Sexual Liberty”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Denver
2018 "Allegorical Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction"
Narrative, Montréal
Public Lecture: “Gothic Novels, Vulnerable Readers”
Sands of Time Lecture Series, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck
"Jeremy Bentham's Queer Christ"
Modern Language Association, New York City
2017 Invited Lecture: "Pleasure in the Age of Shelley"
Penn Shelley Seminar, U of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
"Aesthetics of Trauma in Infinite Jest"
Modern Language Association, Philadelphia
2016 "Ottobah Cugoano and Economic Philosophy"
Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Amherst
Invited Lecture: "The Vulnerable Reader in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction"
University of Tokyo Department of English, Tokyo
2015 "Bentham on the Aesthetics of Sexual Taste"
American Society for Eighteenth-Century STudies, Los Angeles
Courses Taught
Courses Taught
Courses Taught
Courses Taught
Topics
Love in the Enlightenment
Eighteenth-Century Comic Novels
DESIRE AND CONSENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SATIRE
ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE BRITISH NOVEL (B.A. AND M.A.)
THE GOTHIC NOVEL
The Romantic Poets
Victorian Transgressions
Poetics of Desire: Seventeenth-Century Poetry
The Miltonic Sublime
Shakespeare’s Comedies
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
The Bible and Its Influence
Women Writers and the Literary Tradition
LGBTQ Narrative
Allegorical Narratives in Children’s Literature
Modern Philosophy
Slavery and Human Rights
Black literature 1965-2018
Hitchcock: Film Analysis
Theories of Gender and Sexuality
Advanced Poetics
Surveys
African-American Literature
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
British Literature II
American Literature I
Introduction to Philosophy
Introduction to Film
Writing and Methods