My name is Jem Webster. I am the dean of the honors college and an associate professor of English literature at my university, where I teach classes in eighteenth-century British literature and GLBT Lit. My partner, PJ, also teaches in the English department.

My research interests lie in representations of gender, sexuality, and power in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British culture. My first book, Performing Libertinism in Charles II’s Court: Politics, Drama, Sexuality was published by Palgrave McMillan in 2005. In this book, I examine the lives and plays of five authors (George Villiers, duke of Buckingham; John Wilmot, earl of Rochester; Sir Charles Sedley; Sir George Etherege; and William Wycherley) as subversively political performances intended to challenge the social, religious, and political norms of their day. I have also published articles on Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (in Eighteenth-Century Fiction), on Rochester’s scepter lampoon (in English Language Notes), and on antisemitism in Restoration political satire (in the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies).

Me in 2005 (or thereabouts)

I am currently writing a second book, which will study representations of Jewish men and Englishness in Restoration and eighteenth-century texts.

I have been in Athens, OH, since 1999. I attended Texas A&M University for six years, earning my bachelor’s (’92) and master’s degrees (’94). I then earned my doctorate at the University of Tennessee (’99).

Now that I’m a full time administrator, I don’t have a lot of time for other interests (except for Grand Slam Tennis for Wii, to which I am officially addicted). When not administering or playing Wii, I enjoy reading (especially Jane Austen rewrites, vampire novels, and Star Wars fiction–you can’t be an intellectual all the time!), watching too much reality t.v., listening to music, and just hanging out with PJ and our cats, Paisley and Marlowe.