Rate My Professor Esther Godfrey

Dr. Esther Godfrey serves as Professor of Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Chair of the Division of Languages, Literature, and Composition at the University of South Carolina Upstate. She has been a faculty member there since 2008, having been awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2013, promotion to Full Professor in 2020, and elevation to Department Chair in 2024. Prior roles include Director of Composition from 2019 to 2023 and Interim Director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies in 2015. Godfrey began teaching at the university level in 1998. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Tennessee (2006), an M.A. in English from Western Carolina University (1998), and a B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Tennessee (1995).

Godfrey's research specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, with particular emphasis on Victorian and Romantic periods, women’s and gender studies, critical aging studies, nineteenth-century marriage, and critical race studies. She is the author of The January-May Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), which examines age disparity in marriages and its implications for gender and power dynamics in works by authors such as Byron, Dickens, Braddon, du Maurier, and Hardy. Her refereed articles include “ ‘A shade or so of tawny’: Negotiating the Complexion of Britons in the Age of Brexit” (Neo-Victorian Studies, forthcoming 2024), “McKrae Game and the Christian Closet” (Carolina Currents, 2024), “Redeeming Women: Science and Religion in Wilkie Collins’s The New Magdalen” (Victorians Institute Journal, 2019-20), “Simple Sally: Arrested Development and Child Prostitution in Wilkie Collins’s The Fallen Leaves” (Wilkie Collins Journal, 2018), “ ‘Absolutely Miss Fairlie’s own’: Emasculating Economics in The Woman in White” (2013), “Victorian Cougar: H. Rider Haggard’s She, Ageing and Sexual Selection” (Victorian Network, 2012), and “Jane Eyre, from Governess to Girl-Bride” (Studies in English Literature, 2005). She has presented at international conferences, including the Thomas Hardy International Conference (2024) and Victorians Institute (2021), and chaired panels. Godfrey has led significant service initiatives, such as the Black Lives Matter speaker series funded by SC Humanities Council and USC Upstate, composition program revisions, and women's academic leadership groups. She is currently developing a second book on marital problems in Victorian literature and society.