Rate My Professor Jacqueline Foertsch

Jacqueline Foertsch is a Professor of English in the field of Literature at the University of North Texas, where she has been a faculty member since 2002, progressing through the ranks from Assistant Professor (2002–2008) to Associate Professor (2008–2012) and full Professor since 2012. She currently chairs the steering committee for UNT's Postwar Faculty Colloquium and serves as Faculty Advisor for Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. Foertsch holds a Ph.D. in English from Tulane University (1998), an M.A. from the University of Iowa (1989), and a B.A. from Augustana College (1986). Her earlier academic appointments include Assistant Professor at Xavier University of Louisiana (2001–2002) and Instructor at Auburn University (1998–2001).

Foertsch's research and teaching focus on post-WWII American literature and culture, with particular emphasis on Cold War narratives, the cultural impacts of the atomic bomb, polio epidemics, gender dynamics, film studies, the AIDS crisis, and intersections of lesbian, gay, and feminist studies. She is the author of numerous scholarly books, including Freedom’s Ring: Literatures of Liberation from Civil Rights to the Second Wave (Rutgers University Press, 2021), American Drama: In Dialogue, 1714–Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2013), Bracing Accounts: The Literature and Culture of Polio in Postwar America (Associated University Presses, 2009), American Culture in the 1940s (co-edited with Martin Halliwell, Edinburgh University Press, 2008), Conflict and Counterpoint in Lesbian, Gay, and Feminist Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and her first book, Enemies Within: The Cold War and the AIDS Crisis in Literature, Film and Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2001). She is currently completing Chariots of Doom: Getting Around to True Crime in Postwar America. Her contributions to scholarship are recognized through awards such as two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipends (2010, 2004), UNT's Scholarly and Creative Activity Award (2014), GSEA Professor of the Year (2015), and multiple UNT research grants including Research and Creativity Enhancement Grants (2011, 2009) and Faculty Research Grants (2005, 2004, 2003). Foertsch has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals like Contemporary Literature, Journal of Modern Literature, and Philological Quarterly, influencing discussions on postwar American cultural histories and anxieties.