English and Creative Writing

Photo of Professor Regenia Gagnier

Professor Regenia Gagnier

Professor of English, FBA, FAE, FEA, FRSA

R.Gagnier@exeter.ac.uk

4260

01392 724260

Overview

Professor Regenia Gagnier’s specialisms include Victorian and modern Britain; the geopolitics of language and literature migration; world literatures and political economy; political languages; digital humanities;  literary and social theory; sex, gender and sexuality; interdisciplinarity; and women in the professions. Gagnier holds the Established Chair in English Language and Literature at the University of Exeter, founding and co-editorship of the Global Circulation Project, and Senior Research Fellowship in Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences.  Her monographs include Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford, 1986); Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920 (Oxford, 1991); The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society (Chicago, 2000);  Individualism, Decadence and Globalization: on the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920  (Palgrave Macmillan 2010); Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century (Palgrave, 2018). Gagnier has edited special issues of The Global Circulation Project on Scholarly Editing in the Twenty-first Century (2010), Global Modernisms (2012), Twenty‐First Century “Chinoiserie” (2015),  Rabindranath Tagore’s Global Vision (2015),  Contemporary Fictions of Migration:  Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century (2022), Literature of Global Responsibility (2023) and The Futures of English (2023).  She is on the Editorial Boards of 23 scholarly journals and has supervised to completion 87 doctorates at Stanford and Exeter. She recently held Visiting Professorships or fellowships at Tsinghua, Fudan, Melbourne, UMass Amherst, Vanderbilt, Arizona State, Leeds, Delhi, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (Shimla), Shiv Nadar, Humanities Research Centre at ANU in Australia,  and STIAS in South Africa. 

Gagnier has served as Chair of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Study, Great Britain and Ireland; the £1.5 Billion Selection and Interview Panels of UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund; Presiding Officer of six MLA Division Executives in the USA; President of the British Association for Victorian Studies; the AHRC Research Panel and University English Executive, UK. She is Honorary Centenary Fellow of the English Association; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts;  Member of Academia Europaea; on the International Executive Committee of IAUPE (International Association of University Professors of English); Fellow of the British Academy and Chair of the British Academy's Section Modern Languages, Literatures, and other Media from 1830. 

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Research

Professor  Regenia Gagnier's books and lectures have shaped the study of 19-21C British and anglophone culture with highly influential work on decadence, aesthetics and aestheticism, lifewriting and subjectivity, economics, individualism, globalization and political languages. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public  (Stanford, 1986)  considered the role of the artist in market society.  Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920 (Oxford, 1991) analyzed the relationship of social class and gender to literary form.  The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society (Chicago, 2000) traced the moment when aesthetics and economics shifted from substantive to formal models and production to consumption.   Individualism, Decadence and Globalization: on the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920  (Palgrave Macmillan 2010)  explored the relation of the individual to increasingly larger social units, from the dyad to the world citizen. Her book on modernization and the global circulation of political languages, Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century (2018) is  published in the Palgrave series New Comparisons in World Literature. Since 2006 her research has entailed many international collaborations on the global circulation of Anglophone literatures and cultures and the geopolitics of language and literature migration.    

Gagnier is former Co-Editor  of the Global Circulation Project http://literature-compass.com/global-circulationproject/; former associate editor, Feminist Economics; associate editor, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities; Advisory Committee PMLA; editor and advisor COVE (Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education); editorial advisor  to Women: A Cultural Review; and on the editorial boards of Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, Partial Answers, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long 19C, Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, Kritika Kultura, Modern Turkish Literature, RaVoN (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net), Cusp, Public Humanities. 

 Gagnier has won numerous awards and fellowships for teaching as well as research in Britain, Australasia, Europe,  North America, and South Africa.  She has served on seven MLA Division Executive Committees in the USA; the AHRC Research Panel and CCUE Executive in the UK; the Steering Committee of the International Association of University Professors of English; and RCUK Global Challenges as well as other national and international professional bodies. In 2006, she was made  Honorary Centenary Fellow of the English Association,  in 2008 elected to the Royal Society of Arts, in 2011 elected to the International Association of University Professors of English, in 2012 received by the Queen at Buckingham Palace for heritage and scholarship in literature and theatre, and in 2014 elected to Academia Europaea. In 2012, she was the Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne, in 2013 she gave the Ian Fletcher Lecture at Arizona State University at Tempe, and in 2014 Visiting Professor at the University of Delhi and Plenary Speaker at the English Language and Literature Association of Korea (Seoul).  In 2016-17 she co-hosted a conference at the India Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla,  and gave a keynote at the Asia Pacific Forum on Translation and World Literatures at UC Berkeley, among other Keynotes. She was President of the British Association for Victorian Studies 2009-12. She is currently Partner Investigator on a ARC grant and during 2022-23 a Visiting Fellow in Global Liberalisms at the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University and Visiting Fellow at STIAS in South Africa. She is CoI on an ESRC grant with PI Kate Hext studying gender inequality in Korea and the UK and will be Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar in India in 2024.

Gagnier is a native Californian who took her undergraduate and graduate degrees in English at the University of California at Berkeley.  She was tenured and made full professor at Stanford University, where she taught for fourteen years in English, Modern Thought and Literature, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Cultural Studies Group.  In 1996, she moved to the UK and the University of Exeter, where she is Professor of English and Senior Fellow of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/research/sts/egenis/. From 2008-2010 she was Director of Exeter's Interdisciplinary Institute (EII). 2009-2010 she was Chair of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Study UK and Ireland.

Research Specialisms:

  • Victorian and modern Britain
  • the geopolitics and political economy of language and literature migration
  • literary and social theory
  • sex, gender, sexuality
  • interdisciplinary studies, especially with the sciences and engineering
  • digital humanities

 Major Publications

Single-authored Books

• Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public, Stanford University Press (1986)

• Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920, Oxford University Press (1991)

• The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society, University of Chicago Press (2000)

• Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: On the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920 Language, Discourse & Society series of Palgrave Macmillan, Eds. Colin MacCabe, Stephen Heath, Denise Riley (2010)

Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century Palgrave Macmillan New Comparisons in World Literature series, Eds. Pablo Mukherjee and Neil Lazarus (2018)

Edited Collections

• Critical Essays on Oscar Wilde (editor and contributor), Macmillan/G.K. Hall, Critical Essays on British Literature (1992)

• Economics, Culture and Value, Guest Editor of and Contributor to Special Issue of New Literary History (May 2000)

• Victorian Boundaries, Guest Editor (with A. Richardson) of  and Contributor to Special Issue of Victorian Literature and Culture Vol. 32, No. 2 (2004): 392-628.

The Politics of Gender in Anthony Trollop’s Novels: New Readings for the Twenty-First Century, Eds. Margaret Markwick, Deborah Denenholz Morse, Regenia Gagnier (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009).

Palgrave Sourcebook on Victorian Literature, Eds. John Plunkett, Ana Parejo Vadillo, Regenia Gagnier, Angelique Richardson,  Rick Rylance, Paul Young (2012)

• Editor in Chief, Scholarly Editing in the 21st Century Literature Compass 7:2 (Feb 2010): 144 pp. http://literature-compass. 

Eds. And Introduction,  Doyle, L. and Gagnier, R. (2012), The Global Circulation Project’s Forum on Global Modernisms. Literature Compass, 9: 589–592. doi: 10.1111/lic3.12008. Contributors: Supriya Chaudhuri, Elleke Boehmer, Wang Ning, Steven Yao, Paul Young, Katie Trumpener.

Guest Editor and Introduction, The State, or Statelessness, of  Victorian Studies, Special Issue Critical Quarterly, “Introduction: Victorian Studies, World Literatures, and Globalization.” 55:1 (April 2013) Contributors: Lyn Pykett, Mark Llewellyn, Ann Heilmann, Dino Felluga, Jay Clayton, Rae Greiner, David Kurnick



Research collaborations

See CV and Research Profile

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Supervision

Professor Gagnier's other professional passion is working with graduate students for academia's next generation. At Stanford and Exeter, she has supervised to completion 87  PhD students, who now teach in universities around the world. From 2001 through 2004, she was Dean of Exeter's Graduate School, overseeing 3500 MA and Ph.D. students across both HASS and STEMM subjects. She was the founding Convenor of the MA in Criticism and Theory, and taught the core course on Current Debates.  She was the founding Convenor of  the third-year option Advanced Critical Theory, whose students often go on to MAs and PhDs.  She alternates with English's twelve Victorianists in teaching on the MA in Victorian Studies, and regularly teaches on the MA in Global Studies.  She supervises PhD students in  Victorian and Modern Literary Studies, global literary circulation and world literatures, interdisciplinary studies, translation studies, and critical theoretical topics.

Research students

See Research Supervision

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995 | 1994 | 1991 | 1990 | 1989 | 1988 | 1987 | 1986 | 1984 |

2024

  • Gagnier R. (2024) The Geopolitics of Language and Literature Migration, Routledge Companion to Global Victorian Literature and Culture, Routledge/Taylor and Francis.
  • Gagnier R. (2024) The People, the Masses, and the Educated Elite; or, Democracy in the Age of the Internet, The People: Belonging, Exclusion, and Democracy, Cambridge University Press.

2023

2022

  • Aljahdali B. (2022) The Philosophical Aporias of Silence and Taciturnity in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Almu’allaqât.
  • Xue H. (2022) Ekphrasis and Realism: The Representation of the Visual Arts in Victorian Literature, 1850-1900.
  • Gagnier R. (2022) Geopolitics, Migration, and Transcultural Processes, Cusp: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Cultures. Inaugural Issue (in press for 2022).
  • Gagnier R. (2022) Afterword, Re-Reading the Age of Innovation, Taylor & Francis, 233-236, DOI:10.4324/9781003191629-20.
  • Gagnier R. (2022) Between women: a cross-class analysis of status and anarchic humor, Last Laughs, Taylor & Francis, 135-148, DOI:10.4324/9781003273394-9.

2021

  • Gray C. (2021) The Work of American Artist-Activist Dona Ann McAdams 1973-2006.
  • Gagnier R. (2021) From barbarism to decadence without the intervening civilization: or, living in the aftermath of anticipated futures, Feminist Modernist Studies, volume 4, no. 2, pages 166-181, DOI:10.1080/24692921.2021.1950470. [PDF]
  • Char A. (2021) The New Woman in Britain and the Arab World at the Fin de Siècle and Early Twentieth Century.
  • Morse L. (2021) The Radical Dispossessed: Imaginative Rebellions against the Theft of Common Environments 1864-1893.
  • Gagnier R. (2021) The Dialectics of Utopia: Critique of the Gotha Program, Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism, Bloomsbury Academic, 86-98.

2020

  • Alliston A, Ammons E, Arnold J, Baym N, Beckett SL, Beidler PG, Berger RA, Bermann S, Wilson JJ, Boone T. (2020) Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, volume 115, no. 7, pages 1986-2078, DOI:10.2307/463623.
  • Gagnier R. (2020) The Geopolitics of Decadence, Journal of Victorian Literature and Culture, volume Special Issue on Decadence, ed. Dennis Denisoff.

2018

  • Gagnier R. (2018) Global Circulation, Victorian Literature and Culture, volume 46, no. 3-4, pages 719-723, DOI:10.1017/s1060150318000657.
  • Gagnier R. (2018) Bloody Liberalism, Subtle Forms, NOVEL A Forum on Fiction, volume 51, no. 3, pages 525-528, DOI:10.1215/00295132-7086717.
  • Gagnier R. (2018) Geopolitical Displacements and Populisms, Kritika Kultura, no. 30/31, DOI:10.13185/kk2018.03007.
  • Wilde O. (2018) The Harlot's House, Cove.
  • Gagnier RA. (2018) “Global Circulation and Some Problems in Liberalism, Liberalization, and Neoliberalism”, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities Special Issue on Liberalism , volume 11.

2017

  • Gagnier RA. (2017) The Decadence of the West in Huysmans and Houellebecq: Decadence in the Longue Durée, ELT Journal, volume 60, pages 1-12.
  • Gagnier RA. (2017) Dickens’s Global Circulation, Ch. V.48, The Oxford Handbook to Charles Dickens, Oxford University Press.
  • Gagnier RA. (2017) A Symbiological Approach to Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Anthropocene, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities.
  • Gagnier RA. (2017) A Symbiological Approach to Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Anthropocene, Women Writing Across Cultures, Routledge.

2016

2015

  • Gagnier R. (2015) Global Studies, The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, Wiley, 1-7, DOI:10.1002/9781118405376.wbevl131.
  • Gagnier R. (2015) The Global Circulation of Victorian Actants and Ideas in the Niche of Nature, Culture, and Technology: Liberalism and Liberalization, The Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea), volume 61, no. 1, pages 19-39, DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.1.002.
  • Gagnier RA. (2015) The Global Literatures of Decadence, THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE WORLD, Routledge, 11-28.
  • Gagnier RA. (2015) Global Studies, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, Blackwell Publishing, 649-660.
  • Gagnier RA. (2015) The Global Circulation of Victorian Actants and Ideas in the Niche of Nature, Culture, and Technology, JELL: Journal of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea.

2014

  • Gagnier RA. (2014) Preface, Assembling Identities, Assembling Identities, Cambridge Scholars Press.

2013

  • Gagnier R. (2013) The Global Circulation of the Literatures of Decadence, Literature Compass, volume 10, no. 1, pages 70-81, DOI:10.1111/lic3.12020.
  • Gagnier RA. (2013) Introduction: Victorian Studies, World Literatures, and Globalisation, Critical Quarterly: Special Issue, The State, or Statelessness, of Victorian Studies, volume 55, no. 1, pages 1-8.
  • Gagnier RA. (2013) Introduction: Victorian Studies, World Literatures, and Globalisation, Critical Quarterly: Special Issue, The State, or Statelessness, of Victorian Studies, volume 55, no. 1, pages 1-8.
  • Gagnier RA. (2013) The Global Circulation of Charles Dickens's Novels, Literature Compass, volume 10/1, no. 10/1 (2013), pages 82-95, DOI:10.1111/lic3.12021.
  • Gagnier RA. (2013) The Global Circulation of the Literatures of Decadence, Literature Compass:, volume 10/1 (2013), no. The Global Circulation Project, pages 70-81. [PDF]
  • Gagnier R. (2013) Afterword--and Forward: Economic Women in Their Time, Our Time, and the Future, Economic Women: Essays on Desire and Dispossesion in Nineteenth-Century British Culture, Ohio State University Press, 217-222.
  • Gagnier RA. (2013) “Operationalizing Hope: The Neoliberalization of British Universities in Historico-Philosophical Perspective”, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, volume 6, pages 1-11. [PDF]

2012

  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Introduction, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 1-19, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_1.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Empire and Race, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 233-256, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_10.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Science and Technology, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 257-286, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_11.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Key Historical Events, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 20-45, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_2.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Society, Politics and Class, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 46-70, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_3.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Gender and Sexuality, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 71-97, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_4.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Religion and Belief, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 98-122, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_5.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Philosophy and Ideas, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 123-149, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_6.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Popular Culture, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 177-204, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_8.
  • Plunkett J, Vadillo AP, Gagnier R, Richardson A, Rylance R, Young P. (2012) Literary Production and Reception, Victorian Literature, Bloomsbury Academic, 205-232, DOI:10.1007/978-0-230-35701-3_9.
  • Gagnier RA. (2012) Doyle, L. and Gagnier, R. (2012), The Global Circulation Project’s Forum on Global Modernisms. Literature Compass, 9: 589–592. doi: 10.1111/lic3.12008, Literature Compass, volume 9, pages 589-592, DOI:10.1111/lic3.12008.
  • Gagnier RA. (2012) The Global Circulation Project. [PDF]

2011

  • Gagnier RA. (2011) “The Value of Victorian Studies and the Future of the University,” Forum: Victorians Beyond the Academy, Journal of Victorian Culture Online. [PDF]
  • Gagnier RA. (2011) Freedom, Determinism, and Hope in Little Dorrit: A Literary Anthropology, Partial Answers, no. 9/2, pages 331-346.
  • Gagnier RA. (2011) Whither Victorian Studies? The View from BANAVSA, Victoriographies, volume 1, no. 1, pages 51-57, DOI:10.3366/vic.2011.0006. [PDF]
  • Gagnier RA. (2011) Preface, "Crossing the Line: Affinities Before and After 1900", Victorian Network, volume 3, no. 1, pages 1-2, article no. Preface. [PDF]

2010

2009

  • Gagnier R. (2009) Is market society the fin of history?, Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siècle, Cambridge University Press (CUP), 290-310, DOI:10.1017/cbo9780511553707.015.
  • Gagnier. (2009) The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle, edited by Gail Marshall, Victorian Studies, volume 51, no. 3, DOI:10.2979/vic.2009.51.3.564.
  • Gagnier R. (2009) A Literary Anthropology of Freedom and Choice, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, volume 31:4, pages 373-386.
  • Gagnier RA. (2009) Conclusion: Gender, Liberalism, and Resentment, The Politics of Gender in Trollope, ashgate, 235-248.
  • Gagnier RA. (2009) individualism, civilization, and national character in market democracies, sublime economy: on the intersection of art and economics, routledge, 152-171.
  • Gagnier RA, markwick M, morse D. (2009) The Politics of Gender in Trollope, ashgate.

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

  • Gagnier R. (2004) INTRODUCTION: BOUNDARIES IN THEORY AND HISTORY, Victorian Literature and Culture, volume 32, no. 2, pages 397-406, DOI:10.1017/s1060150304000555.
  • Gagnier, R.. (2004) The Victorian Fin de Siecle and the Decadence, The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, Cambridge, 30-49.

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

  • Gagnier R. (1999) Methodology and New Historicism, Journal of Victorian Culture, volume 4, no. 1, pages 116-122, DOI:10.1080/13555509909505982.
  • Gagnier R. (1999) “THE DISTURBANCES OVERSEAS”: A COMPARATIVE REPORT ON THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH STUDIES, Victorian Literature and Culture, volume 27, no. 2, pages 465-472, DOI:10.1017/s1060150399272075.
  • Dupre JA, Gagnier RA. (1999) Reply to Amariglio and Ruccio's "Literary/Cultural `Economies', Economic Discourse and the Question of Marxism", The New Economic Criticism, Routledge, 401-407.
  • Dupre JA, Gagnier RA. (1999) The Ends of Economics, The New Economic Criticism, Routledge, 175-189.

1998

1997

1996

  • Dupre J, Gagnier R. (1996) A brief history of work, JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES, volume 30, no. 2, pages 553-559, DOI:10.1080/00213624.1996.11505819. [PDF]

1995

1994

1991

  • Gagnier R. (1991) Between Women, Feminisms, Springer Nature, 927-937, DOI:10.1007/978-1-349-22098-4_50.
  • Gagnier R, Cisneros S, Anzaldúa G, Kennedy A, Lorde A, Chernin K, Simon K, Steedman CK, Nestle J, Chávez D. (1991) The Last of the Menu Girls, Feminist Studies, volume 17, no. 1, DOI:10.2307/3178175.

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1984

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External impact and engagement

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Contribution to discipline

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Media

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