Heather Schell

Headshot of Heather Schell in a blue shirt.

Heather Schell

Assistant Professor of Writing - On Sabbatical


Contact:

Ames Hall 2100 Foxhall Road NW, Ames 212 Washington DC 20007

Heather Schell is an Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program.  She teaches courses that focus on popular culture, science, and politics in the US, including  "Science and Public Controversy" and "Love and Romance in American Popular Culture."  Her current book project looks at popular romance stories in Turkey and the US.  This labor of love is grounded in her research work in Turkey, where she surveyed more than 300 Turkish readers of Harlequin romances, interviewed translators, and worked with a research assistant to back-translate a Turkish-language Harlequin romance into English.  She currently co-chairs the Romance Area of the Popular Culture Association.

 


Ph.D. Modern Thought and Literature (2000). Stanford University

M.A. English (1991). Georgetown University

B.S.F.S., Foreign Service (1988).  Georgetown University

“After ‘I Do’:  Turkish Harlequin Readers Re-Imagine the Happy Ending.”  Journal of Popular Romance Studies,  vol. 9, 2020, pp. 1-14.  www.jprstudies.org/

(co-authored with Katherine Larsen) “How The Story Ends: Gender, Sexuality, and Nation in the Happy Ending.” Writing from Below, vol. 4, no. 2, 2019.  writingfrombelow.org/happiness/how-the-story-ends-schell-larsen/

“Love’s Laborers Lost: Radway, Romance Writers, and Recuperating Our Past.”  Journal of Popular Romance Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2014.   www.jprstudies.org/

“Bringing the Mid-West to the Middle East:  An Analysis of a Harlequin Romance in English and Turkish.”  The Silk Road of Adaptation:  Transformations across Disciplines and Cultures, edited by Laurence Raw, Cambridge Scholars, 2013, pp. 160-171.  

“The Love Life of a Fact.”  How Well Do Facts Travel?:  The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge, edited by Peter Howlett and Mary S. Morgan, Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. 429-54.

“The Big Bad Wolf: Masculinity and Genetics in Popular Culture.” Literature and Medicine, vol. 26, no. 1, 2007, pp. 109-25. 

“Tiger Tales: Anthropomorphism in Victorian Hunting Narratives.” Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations in Literature and Culture, edited by Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin Danahay, Ashgate, 2007, pp. 229-48. 

“The Sexist Gene: Science Fiction and the Germ Theory of History.” American Literary History, vol. 14, no. 4, 2002, pp. 805-27.