Mary Mussman researches literary histories of gender variance and queer sexuality in Britain and France, focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the 2024–2025 academic year, they are a Visiting Professor at Deep Springs College.
Their dissertation, “Intimate Reading: Femininity, Sexuality, and Literary Subcultures of Britain and France,” examines how the field of literary production in Britain and France made certain minor forms of sexual experience culturally legible. Drawing on a Victorian and modernist archive, they contend that the cultural legibility of queer sexual experience across genders relied on the shifting indexical meaning of certain qualities.
Mary holds an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from UC Berkeley (2020) and a B.A. in Literature from Yale (2015), and has also studied at l'École Normale Supérieure de Paris and l'Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV).
Courses:
Fall 2024 (Deep Springs) – Sappho After Sappho
Spring 2024 – R1B Trans Literary History: https://s24transliteraryhistory.myportfolio.com/
Fall 2023 – R1B Trans Literary History: https://r1btransliteraryhistory.myportfolio.com/
Spring 2023 – Comp Lit 151/Classics 161 History of Sexualities: Interpreting the Queer Past (as teaching assistant for Professor Leslie Kurke)
Fall 2022 – Comp Lit 298 Comparative Literature Graduate Community Building Workshop
Summer 2021 – Comp Lit 50 Creative Writing, Comparative Writing: https://creativewritingcomparativewriting.wordpress.com/
Fall 2019 – Comp Lit 151/Classics 161 History of Sexualities: Interpreting the Queer Past (as teaching assistant for Professor Leslie Kurke)
Spring 2019 – R1B The Pathological Text: https://r1bthepathologicaltext.wordpress.com/
Fall 2018 – R1B Female Frenzy: https://r1bfemalefrenzy.wordpress.com/
Spring 2018 – R1B Family Portraits: https://r1bfamilyportraits.wordpress.com/
Fall 2017 – R1B The Real Housewives of Comparative Literature: https://therealhousewivesofcomparativeliterature.wordpress.com/