Anna Brecke

Anna J. Brecke’s research focuses on gender and popular media in the 19th century and today. Specific interests include non-canonical 19th-century women’s writing, the periodic press and serialized narrative, television and the gendered body, and gender in supernatural/speculative fiction. Her book Widening the Sphere: Mid-to-Late Victorian Popular Fiction, Gender Representation, and Canonicity addresses the erasure of popular women writers in the formation of Victorian studies, which established a long-standing canon that was mainly concerned with the form of the novel rather than the literature of the Victorian period and illustrates the incomplete picture of women’s writing, gender roles and gendered space in Victorian literature and culture this canon created. She is a co-founder of the Mary Elizabeth Braddon Association and works as an area chair in Women’s and Gender Studies for the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association. Media appearances include episode 4.5 of The Victorian Scribblers podcast and on season 1 episode 6 of the 3 Interns and Counting podcast.