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Phyllis Lassner
Professor of Instruction, The Writing Program, Jewish Studies, and Gender Studies

PhD, Wayne State University

Kresge Hall, 2-250
847-491-7414
phyllisl@northwestern.edu

Phyllis Lassner teaches themed sections of Intermediate Composition that focus on many subjects that have motivated students to become deeply involved in their writing. In addition to her spring term course, "Writing About Children and the Holocaust," she now offers a cross listed Writing Program and Gender Studies course, "Writing About Colonialism, Race, and Gender. These courses offer students opportunities to develop their writing skills as they explore the powerful and complex themes that shape stories and other artwork about these compelling experiences. She also teaches "Representing the Holocaust in Literature and Film," taught every winter in Jewish Studies and "Gender, Race, and the Holocaust in the Gender Studies Program in the fall.

Dr. Lassner's research and publications are deeply related to her teaching; they focus on the responses of modern British women writers to World War II and colonialism. She is the author of two books on the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen, /British/ /Women Writers of World War II/ , /Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire/, and many articles about interwar and wartime women writers. Her latest book, /Anglo-Jewish Women Writing the Holocaust,/ will be published this fall, 2008.

Other professional activities include giving fireside talks at the Women's Residential College and serving as Co-President of the scholarly society, The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945, for which she hosted the tenth annual conference here at Northwestern, June 2008. Dr. Lassner also serves on the Northwestern University Press Board and on the advisory and editorial boards of several scholarly journals. She recently completed a five year term on the Modern Language Association Executive Committee for Twentieth Century English Literature.

Among the many rewards of teaching, she feels especially proud of her undergraduate students who have won awards for their writing and of her graduate student, Paula Derdiger, who won the award for outstanding Master's Thesis in 2008 and has now entered the PhD program in English literature at McGill University.

Publications

Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire

Events

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Tenth Annual Conference of the Space Between Society Northwestern University Evanston Campus June 13-14, 2008

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