兔子先生

Moores Professor of English Literature 

Margot Gayle Backus is a Moores Professor of English at the 兔子先生. Her first book, The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (Duke University Press, Post-Contemporary Interventions, 1999, traced the origins of the obsessive depictions of child sacrifice in the Anglo-Irish gothic to the operations of nuclearization and heteronormativity through which English familial and sex/gender norms reshaped the Irish social order. The Gothic Family Romance won the American Conference for Irish Studies Prize for a Distinguished First Book, and was recognized as a Choice Outstanding Title.   

In 2007-8, Backus was the Irish American Cultural Institute-National University of Ireland-Galway Fellow in Residence at the NUI-Galway Martha Fox Centre for Irish Studies, where she conducted research on the Irish culture of sex scandal. Her 2013 study, Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) describes the extensive impact of the New Journalist sex scandal on the Irish Home Rule Movement, and James Joyce鈥檚 extensive and complex engagements with the form.  

Backus was 2014-15 Queens University Fulbright Scholar of Anglophone Irish Writing, and 2015 James Joyce Scholar in residence at the University of Buffalo.  

In 2015-17, with UH Department of English colleague Maria Gonzalez, Backus co-edited three edited volumes of creative and nonfiction writing and artwork titles&苍产蝉辫;鈥�Borderlines鈥� for the Houston transnational arts organization, Voices Breaking Boundaries. 

In 2020, with Joseph Valente, Backus co-authored The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable (Indiana University Press, 2020). 

back to top

Education

• Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, English Literature
• M.A., University of Texas at Austin, English Literature
• B.A., University of Massachusetts/Boston, English Literature

Selected Publications

Books

(2020)The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable, with  Joseph Valente.      Indiana University Press. 鈥淚rish Culture, Memory, Place鈥� Series. 300 pages.

(2013) Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars. Notre Dame,  IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 328 pages; Kindle Edition, 2014.                                               

(1999) The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order.        Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 鈥淧ost-Contemporary Interventions鈥� Series. 304 pages. 

Articles and Book Chapters

(2022)&苍产蝉辫;鈥溾�橪ove鈥檚 Poison Mystery鈥�: Food, Sex, and the New Journalist Sex Scandal in Lestrygonians,鈥� invited submission for Ulysses centenary issue, Joyce Studies Annual. 

(2021)&苍产蝉辫;鈥溾�橝 Fairy Boy of Eleven, a Changeling, Kidnapped, Dressed in an Eton Suit鈥�: Precarious, Lost, and Recovered Children in Anglophone Irish Modernism.鈥� In press, Irish Modernism, ed. Maud Ellmann, S卯an White and Vicki Mahaffey. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 131-146. 

(2020) 鈥淎bused Ireland: Psychoanalyzing the Enigma of Sexualized Innocence,鈥� with Joseph Valente, in Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies, ed. Renee Fox, Michael Cronin, and Brian O鈥機onchubair (London: Routledge). 

(2020) 鈥溾�橮ortals of Discovery鈥� or 鈥榓n Immorality in Three Orgasms鈥�: How James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses Stopped Being  Too Queer to Queer,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Intertexts: A Journal of Comparative and Theoretical Reflection. 24:1-2, 97-132. 

(2018) 鈥溾�橶ar upon War鈥�: The Anti-War Militancy of James Connolly and the Irish Citizens Army鈥� (with Spurgeon Thompson), Ireland and World War I special issue, ed. Mark S. Quigley, Modernist Cultures 12:3, 365-81. 

(2017) 鈥溾�橳he Only Human Person in that Whole Neighborhood鈥�: James Joyce, Edna O鈥橞rien, and the Question of Originality,鈥� special issue on gender, sexuality and intersectionality, Breac: Digital Journal of Irish Studies, July 17, 1-17. 

(2014) 鈥溾�橳hose Who Create Themselves Wits at the Expense of Feminine Delicacy鈥�: W.T. Stead, James Joyce, and the Maiden Tribute Sex Scandal,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;in Ireland and the New Journalism, ed. Karen Steele and Michael de Nie (NY: Palgrave MacMillan), 161-80. 

(2014) 鈥溾�橳he Children of the Nation?鈥�: Representations of Poor Children in Mainstream Nationalist Journalism, 1882 and 1913,鈥� in Children and Childhood in Ireland: 1700-2010, ed. Maria Luddy and James Smith (Dublin: Four Courts Press), 357-77. 

(2013) 鈥淭he Woman Who Did: Maria鈥檚 Maternal Misdirection in James Joyce鈥檚 鈥楥lay,鈥欌�� with Martha Stallman, Joyce Studies Annual 2013, 129-50. 

(2013) 鈥淜ate O鈥橞rien, The Land of Spices, and the Stylistic Invention of Lesbian (In)visibility,鈥� with Joe Valente, Irish University Review 43:1, 55-73. 

(2012) 鈥溾�橝n Encounter鈥�: James Joyce鈥檚 Humiliation Nation,鈥� with Joe Valente, in Collaborative Dubliners: Joyce in Dialogue, ed. Vicki Mahaffey (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press), 48-68. 

(2009) 鈥溾�橳hings That Have the Potential to Go Terribly Wrong鈥�: Homosexuality, Paedophelia, and the Kincora Boys Home Scandal,鈥� in The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, ed. Noreen Giffney and Michael O'Rourke (Aldershot: Ashgate), 237-56. 

(2009) 鈥溾�橳he Children of the Nation?鈥�: Representations of Poor Children in Mainstream Nationalist Journalism, 1882 and 1913,鈥� special issue on children, childhood, and Irish society, ed. Maria Luddy and James Smith, Eire/Ireland 44: 1&2,118-46. 

(2009) 鈥溾�橝n Iridescence Difficult to Account For鈥�: Sexual Initiation in Joyce鈥檚 Fiction of Development,鈥� with Joe Valente, ELH: Journal of English Literary History 76:2, 523-45. 

(2008) 鈥溾�橭dd Jobs鈥�: James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and the Scandal Fragment,鈥� Joyce Studies Annual 2008,105-45. 

(2008) 鈥溾�橫ore Useful Washed and Dead鈥�: James Connolly, W.B. Yeats, and the Sexual Politics of Easter 1916,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;special issue on James Connolly, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 10:1, 67-85 

(2008) 鈥溾�橢verybody Knew, Nobody Said鈥�: Transnational Laundries and Transnational Trauma across the Irish/Northern Irish Border,鈥� in Irish Studies: Geographies and Genders, ed. Marti Lee and Ed Madden (Cambridge: Cambridge Publishing, 21-37). 

(2001) 鈥溾�業鈥檓 Your Mother; She Was a Carrying Case鈥�: Gender, Sexuality, and the Symbolics of Adoption in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,鈥� in Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture, ed. Marianne Novy (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press), 133-49. 

(2001) 鈥淪exual Figures of National Identity in 鈥楾he Dead,鈥欌��&苍产蝉辫;European Joyce Studies 11: James Joyce and the Fabrication of an Irish Identity, 111-31. 

(2001) 鈥淩iverine Crossings: Gender, Identity and the Reconstruction of National Mythic Narrative in The Crying Game,鈥� with James Doan, Cultural Studies 15:1, 173-91. 

(2001) 鈥溾�楢 Most Curious State of Affairs鈥�: Eamonn McCann on the Good Friday Agreement,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Rethinking Marxism 13:1, 83-97. 

(2001) 鈥溾�業t鈥檚 Not Quite Philadelphia, Is It?鈥� Interview with Eamonn McCann,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Eire/Ireland, December, 174-89. 

(1996) 鈥淒iscourse and Silence in the Victorian Family Cell: Problems of Subjectivity in The History of Sexuality: Vol. I,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Victorian Literature and Culture 24, 159-74. 

(1996) 鈥淪exual Orientation in the (Post)Imperial Nation: Celticism and Inversion Theory in The Well of Loneliness,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 15:2, 45-58. 

(1994) 鈥淲ith His Pistol in Her Hand: Re-Articulating the Corrido Narrative in Helena Mar铆a Viramontes鈥� 鈥楴eighbors,鈥欌�� with JoAnn Pavletich, Cultural Critique 27,  127-52. 

(1994) 鈥溾�楲ooking for that Dead Girl鈥�: Incest, Pornography, and the Capitalist Family Romance in Nightwood, The Years, and Tarbaby,鈥�&苍产蝉辫;American Imago 51:4, 421-45. 

(1993) 鈥淛udy Grahn and the Lesbian Invocational Elegy: Testimonial and Prophetic Responses to Social Death in 鈥楢 Woman is Talking to Death,鈥欌��&苍产蝉辫;Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18:4, 815-37. 

back to top

Honors, Awards, and Grants Received  

Classes Taught

Undergraduate 

• Introduction to Fiction: 鈥淢ourning and Melancholia鈥�&苍产蝉辫; 
• Senior Experience Research Seminar: 鈥淎rchival Ulysses鈥�&苍产蝉辫; 
• Queer Theory   
• The History of Literary Criticism and Theory  
• Modern Irish Literature  
• Contemporary Irish Literature 
• Introduction to Literary Studies: Middlemarch  
• Introduction to Literary Studies: James Joyce鈥檚 Dubliners and Affect Theory   
• Modern British Literature   
• Gay and Lesbian Literature  
• Introduction to Literary Studies: Reading Ulysses  
• Postcolonial Literature  
• The Contemporary Novel  

Graduate  

• 鈥淎 New and Complex Sensation鈥�: Sexual Subjectivity in the Writing of James Joyce  
• British Empire: The Pedagogy of Empire  
• Preseminar in British Modernism: the Roots of Irish and British Modernism  
• Preseminar in British Modernism: Children of Empire   
• Topics in Postcolonial Studies: Ireland  
• The British Novel from 1832: Literary Critical Pedagogy   
• Introduction to Doctoral Studies (2011)  
• Ulysses  
• Queer Closures: The Sexual Politics of Literary Form  
• The British Women鈥檚 Novel from 1832   
• Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Irish Literature  
• Literary Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Empire 

Research Interests

• British and Irish modernisms 
• Modern and contemporary Irish studies 
• Critical sexuality studies, queer theory, lgbtq literatures 
• Empire studies, critical race studies 

Current Book Project

• Keeping James Joyce Out of Oscar Wilde鈥檚 Purple Trousers: the Joycean Anecdote and the North American Joyce Industry 

Affiliations and Links

• Joyce Studies Annual 
• Texas Irish Working Group  
• Queering Ireland 
• Irish Statement in Support of Black Lives Matter 

back to top