Professional Summary
Beth Ash received her undergraduate degree in literature with high honors from the University of Michigan and holds a MA and PhD in English from the University of Virginia. She is the author of Writing In Between: Joseph Conrad and the Psychosocial Dilemmas of Modernity and numerous journal articles and book chapters on the topics of literary modernism, feminism as critique, and feminist revisions of psychoanalysis. Although a new joint appointment with the Center, she has long been teaching the undergraduate Feminist Theory and the graduate Feminist Theory: Foundations for the Center. She also offers seminars on feminism and psychoanalysis, assists with student advising, and serves on MA committees.
Education
PhD: University of Virginia To Present
Abbreviated Publications
Book
Writing In Between: Modernity and Psychosocial Dilemma in the Novels of Joseph Conrad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Book Chapter
"New Essays on The Portait of a Lady." Frail Vessels and Vast Designs: A Portrait of Isabel Archer. Ed. Joel Porte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 123, 163.
Peer Reviewed Publications
"Review Essay on Dreams of Authority by Ronald Thomas." Psychohistory 21 (1993): 221, 232.
"Review of Thomas Mann and Georg Lukacs by Judith Marcus." Comparative Literature Studies 37 (1990).
"Walter Benjamin: Ethnic Fears, Oedipal Anxieties, Political Consequences." New German Critique 48 (1989): 2, 42.
"Jewish Hermeneutics and Contemporary Theory: Hartman, Bloom, and Derrida." Modern Philology 49 (1987): 65, 80.
"Review of The Deconstructive Turn by Christopher Norris." Modern Philology 48 (1986).
"An Anatomy of Cultural identity in Diaspora Literature.".
Work in Progress
A Theory Textbook for Undergraduates..
Hysterical Fictions: Readings in Henry James. Palgrave Press.
Presentations
Lecture
(2004. ) Deconstruction and the Art of Interpretation in Contemporary Psychotherapy .
(02-2001. ) Acting Female: Henry James in Familial and Cultural Contexts .University of Cincinnati.
(11-1999. ) The Sensation of A Dream: Marlow’s Narrative Trance in Heart of Darkness .Univesitaire de Lumier, Lyons France.
(05-1999. ) Lacan’s Essays on Feminine Sexuality .Boston University .
(08-1998. ) Joseph Conrad Hugs a Horse: An Overdetermined Moment in The Secret Agent .
(06-1998. ) Mourning in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction .Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.
(04-1997. ) Shakespeare’s King Lear and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres: Feminist Reading and Canon Revision .
(06-1996. ) An Introduction to Julia Kristeva .Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.
(1995. ) Feminism, Postmodernism, and Psychoanalysis .Women’s Studies Group of the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.
(1994. ) Babe Feminism’s Saleable Image: The Co-optation of Women’s Resistance by the Culture Industry (?) .
(06-1993. ) Reinterpreting Henry James from a Post-Freudian Standpoint .Henry James Sesquicentennial Conference.
(1992. ) The Perversity of Moral Recuperation in The Golden Bowl .
(11-1992. ) Theorizing Feminism and Post-Modernism in Classical Scholarship .Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati .
(1992. ) Psychosocial Dialectics, A Wilderness of Babies, and Imperialist Ideology and Heart of Darkness, a Mini-Visiting Professorship on Joseph Conrad and Psychoanalytic Theory .University of Tennessee.
(1991. ) Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Social Agency .
(1991. ) Winnicott, Lacan, and Literary Criticism .
(1990. ) Feminist Scholarship on Virginia Woolf .University of Chicago.
(1989. ) Kristeva’s Encounter with Female Hysteria .
(1989. ) On the One Hand, On the Other Hand; Derrida’s De Man .Hillel House, University of Chicago.
(1988. ) Critical Theory and Contemporary Jewish Scholars .University of Chicago.
(1987. ) A Psychoanalytic Portrait of Isabel Archer .
(1987. ) Freud, Feminism, and The Portrait of a Lady: Revising Freud’s Theory of Female Sexuality .Midwest Faculty Seminar – Conference on Gender.
(1985. ) Dionysius and Ariadne: A Reading of Nietzche’s Beyond Good and Evil .University of Chicago.
Keywords
modernism, critical theory