Rate My Professor Anna Duane

Anna Mae Duane is a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, specializing in Literature, and serves as Director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Her academic career at UConn began in 2004 as Assistant Professor of English at Storrs and Torrington campuses, advancing to Associate Professor in 2010 and Full Professor in 2022. She previously directed the American Studies Program from 2009 to 2012 and coordinated Tri-Campus American Studies from 2004 to 2009. Duane earned her PhD from Fordham University. Her research centers on American Literature from origins through the nineteenth century, Childhood Studies, African American Literature, Literary and Critical Theory, Disability Studies, American Studies, and Medical Humanities, particularly examining how concepts of youth and childhood influence culture, policy, race, slavery, and rights.

Duane's scholarship has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities through a Six-Month Faculty Fellowship in 2007 and an Enduring Questions Grant in 2013, Fulbright Lecturer Award in Belgium in 2011 and Specialist Scholar in 2019, Yale Gilder Lehrman Center Research Fellowships in 2008 and 2016, University of Connecticut Humanities Institute Fellowships in 2016 and 2022, Society of Early Americanists Best Essay Prize in 2006, and election as Member of the American Antiquarian Society in 2016. She is the author of Suffering Childhood in Early America: Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim (University of Georgia Press, 2010) and Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys who Grew Up to Change a Nation (NYU Press, 2020), and editor or co-editor of The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities (2013), Child Slavery before and after Emancipation: An Argument for Child-Centered Slavery Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Who Writes for Black Children?: African American Children’s Literature before 1900 (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and Furious Feminisms: Alternate Routes on Mad Max Fury Road (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). Her articles appear in American Literature, Studies in American Fiction, and Cambridge History of the American Novel. Duane co-edits Common-place, an interactive journal of early American life, and contributes public scholarship to Salon.com, Slate.com, and podcasts. She has delivered lectures at Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, and the American Antiquarian Society.