Julie Husband

Associate Professor
229 Baker Hall
319.273.3849
Julie.Husband@uni.edu
Areas of Specialty: American Literature, African-American Literature

Dr. Julie Husband received her BA from Bucknell University, her MA from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo.  Dr. Husband joined the UNI faculty in 2000 where she has taught classes in American literature, short fiction, contemporary writers Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, as well as offering an assortment of liberal arts core courses.  She has contributed to interdisciplinary programs and events on campus, including the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Emily Dickinson Artsongs, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and the Walt Whitman celebration.

In collaboration with Dr. Jim O’Loughlin, Dr. Husband published Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870-1900 (Greenwood Press, 2004), an examination of many facets of life during the industrial era, incorporating first-hand accounts from steel workers, industrial tycoons, female mill workers, domestic advice columnists, educators, and more. Dr. Husband has published articles on Frederick Douglass (Proteus: A Journal of Ideas and Roots and Realities of Multiculturalism), The Lowell Offering ( Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers), Lydia Maria Child ( ESQ), Philip Roth (Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author), and W.E.B. DuBois (The Afterlife of John Brown). She has also published several book reviews and spoken at numerous conferences.

She is currently revising a second book, Antislavery Discourse in American Literature: Incendiary Pictures forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan. It examines the relationship between antislavery texts and emerging representations of “free labor” in mid-nineteenth-century America. Images of corrupted or separated families in slavery, circulated primarily by women leaders, proved to be the most powerful weapon in the antislavery cultural campaign and ultimately turned the nation against slavery. Moreover, these sentimental narratives and icons powerfully influenced Americans’ sense of the role of government, gender, and race in industrializing America. Individual chapters examine the writings of ardent abolitionists (Lydia Maria Child and Frederick Douglass), non-activist sympathizers (E.D.E.N. Southworth and the working-class women writing for the Lowell Offering) and those actively hostile but deeply immersed in antislavery activism (Nathaniel Hawthorne).

Dr. Husband and Dr. O’Loughlin are married and have three children, Nicholas, in fifth grade, Devin, in first grade, and Ian, into everything, as he is three years old.

Contact Dr. Husband