Regina Hewitt
Professor

Contact

Office: CPR 325
Phone: 813/974-9514
Email:

Bio

Regina Hewitt earned her Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. from Columbia University after completing a B.A. at Rutgers University. Upon receipt of her doctorate in 1987, she joined the faculty at USF. Hewitt specializes in the literature and social theory of the Romantic Era; in the history of literary criticism, with particular attention to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and in the history and problems of disciplinarity. Her interests are reflected in a broad range of publications. Her first book, Wordsworth and the Empirical Dilemma (Peter Lang, 1990), examines how Wordsworth’s poetry includes respect for individuality within the concept of community. Her second book, The Possibilities of Society: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Sociological Viewpoint of English Romanticism (SUNY P, 1997), reinterprets the work of the canonical poets as a predisciplinary sociology. Her third book, Symbolic Interactions: Social Problems and Literary Interventions in the Works of Baillie, Scott, and Landor (Bucknell UP, 2006), considers how the dramas, novels, and Imaginary Conversations of the named authors grapple with problems of justice, poverty, and political participation. Her recent articles include “Joanna Baillie at Hull-House: A Working Hypothesis for Disciplinary Reform,” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 27 (2004): 113-49; “Joanna Baillie’s Stardom,” Literature Compass 1 (2004) <http://www.literature-compass.com>; “Walter Savage Landor,” Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, ed. Chris Murray (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004); “On Reconciling Past and Future: Some Effects of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations,” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 24 (2001): 273-97; “Landor, Shelley, and the Design of History,” Romanticism on the Net 20 (2000) <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/20hewitt.html>; “Friendly Instruction: Coleridge and the Discipline of Sociology,” The Lessons of Romanticism, ed. Robert F. Gleckner and Thomas Pfau (Duke UP, 1998): 89-102. From 1994 to 2000, Hewitt served as Director of the DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies at USF, and with Pat Rogers, she co-edited a volume of essays from the conference, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Eighteenth-Century Society (Bucknell UP, 2002). From 1997 to 2003, she served as Book Review Editor for The European Romantic Review and currently co-edits the journal. She has also held the offices of Secretary (1996-2002) and Vice President (2002-present) of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.

Education

Ph.D., M. Phil., M.A., Columbia

Specialty Area

British romanticism, 18th & 19th century literary & social criticism; disciplinarity

Current Courses