Why, hello there!

Good morrow, fair internet! My name is Hannah Johnson and I am a second year graduate student and teaching assistant in the University of Alaska Anchorage English Department. I grew up in Kodiak, Alaska, where I spent a lot of time marveling at the natural beauty of it all ... through the window while I sat inside thinking deep thoughts (or, well, thoughts) about Harry Potter.

My particular area of literary interest is female-centric Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature. (I'm also very interested in L.M. Montgomery and Jane Austen, who do not quite fit into that time frame.) The Brontes are my favorite Victorians, particularly Charlotte. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on Jane Eyre's influence upon the non-heteronormative depiction of gender roles in Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, and I will be returning to Charlotte Bronte again with my Master's thesis. I'm especially interested in examining the facets of the connection between Jane and Rochester's "mad wife" Bertha. More broadly, I love to examine the relationships between female characters in nineteenth century settings. I am fascinated by the potential for female camaraderie (sometimes within a surface-level rivalry) to grant women empowerment and support within a very patriarchal and repressive society.

Texts of particular interest to me in this regard are Charlotte Bronte(or as I like to call her, CharBro)'s Jane Eyre and Villette, J. Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla, Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, Jane Harris's The Observations, and Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle Trilogy, among others I have no doubt neglected to mention.

I'm also very interested in feminist reinterpretations of traditional fairytales and mythology/literary classics/etc. Basically, if a legendary female character's reclaiming her agency through a fresh retelling of an old tale, I'm there.

In addition to my role as a student, I teach two sections of Introduction to Composition, one face-to-face and one online. I've loved my past two semesters teaching the course in a face-to-face setting, and I'm enjoying the challenge of puzzling out how to transfer the English 111 experience to the online environment. I would like to continue teaching once I'm done with the MA program, and would especially love to try my hand at introductory level literature courses.

When I'm not being pretty happily devoured by schoolwork, I love to write fiction. My first novel, a contemporary romantic comedy (starring an English major of course!) called Know Not Why, is available online through Amazon and Smashwords and has received some very nice GoodReads reviews. (And some grumpy ones of course, but I just focus on the one with the gif of Rapunzel twirling around happily.) I have also published a collection of fairytale retellings called The Beautiful Thing, as well as an assortment of (mostly comedic) short stories available on my Smashwords profile. I keep a very sporadically updated writing blog of sorts here.