Jen McDaneld, Ph.D.

Instructor, English

Jen McDaneld is a feminist literary critic with an interest in engaging the humanities with the wider public. She received her Ph.D. in American literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and earned a graduate certificate in feminist studies and a B.A. in literature and women’s studies from Duke University. Her research focuses on suffrage literature, the historiography of U.S. women’s rights movements, and the scholarship of teaching and learning with articles published or forthcoming in journals such as Legacy, Signs, Feminist Teacher, Pedagogy, and Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. Jen has taught a variety of courses at UP, including American literature surveys and core curriculum courses exploring contemporary cultural concepts such as “burnout” and “resilience” from a literary-historical perspective. She first came to UP as visiting faculty and after deciding to remain in Portland long-term, continued to teach as adjunct faculty in the English department as she began work on the development of a public humanities program in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2019 she co-founded the Public Research Fellows (PRF) with Molly Hiro and has co-directed the program for the past three years, designing and teaching the PRF public humanities course and supervising the program’s interns. She and Hiro have won an NEH grant for the coming year for their project “Core Humanities: Integration Through Curriculum, Campus, and Community.” Originally from Kansas City, Jen enjoys life as a Portland transplant, spending time gardening, cooking, and playing tennis whenever the sun comes out.