Alumna Emily Orlando, Ph.D. ’91, a professor of English at Fairfield University and Saint Anselm English department professor, Ann Holbrook, Ph.D, shared their expertise on the history of feminist literature through a co-taught class offered to Saint Anselm English students. Professor Orlando was on campus as speaker for the Academic Convocation celebrating the fifty plus years of women’s education at Saint Anselm College.
Friday’s class focused on the evolution of feminism through English literature within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This collaborative class outlined the complexity and challenges many female authors faced during different historical times, featuring the works of well-renowned Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf.
Professor Holbrook, who specializes in teaching nineteenth and twentieth-century British literature, shared that “we have to understand feminism in its context and not reduce it to labels.”
Students were taught that the meaning of feminism is not limited to one single definition. An insight on feminist achievements through literature and education connected to the Academic Convocation and the expansion of women’s academics beyond the nursing program in 1974.
One student who attended, Alexandra Costa ‘24, said that “the class was quite interesting analyzing the different literature of influential women.”
Professor Orlando is the author of the award-winning book, Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts. She is also co-editor of the book, Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, and has published widely in a number of scholarly journals and essay collections. She is a recent president of the international Edith Wharton Society and remains an active member of the society. Professor Orlando edited The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, published in 2022, which features top scholars in her field from around the globe. She is currently editing a reader-friendly edition of Edith Wharton’s first book, The Decoration of Houses, co-written with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr and published in 1897.
Since joining the Fairfield University faculty in 2007, Professor Orlando has taught nineteenth- and twentienth–century literature and courses on women writers, served as the director or co-director of the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and is the department’s internship coordinator.
Professor Orlando has been recognized with awards for her teaching and mentoring including the Fairfield’s 2019 College of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Advising and Mentoring. In 2019 students in the Honors Program voted her “Best Professor” for her Honors Seminar in Victorian literature and culture. She has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland.
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