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Alexis Schmidt (she/her/hers)

PhD Candidate, Literary Studies

Biography

Alexis Schmidt is a PhD candidate of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She studies turn-of-the-century US literature, primarily written by or about women, and her research interests are work, energy, and exhaustion. Her dissertation is tentatively titled "American Exhaustion: Energy, Bodies, and Literature in the Progressive Era." Her scholarship has appeared in I Write, 6th ed. and the Edith Wharton Review (forthcoming). She has presented conference papers at SSAWW (2021) and C19 (2022, 2024). 

Research Interests

  • Late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century U.S. Literature
  • Exhaustion, energy, and work
  • Gender and Women's Writing
  • Realism and Naturalism
  • Environmental Humanities and Medical Humanities

Education

  • MA English Literature, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2022 
  • BA English Literature, Butler University, 2018

Awards and Honors

  • English Department Peer Essay Contest Winner, 2023
  • Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students: Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, and Spring 2023

Courses Taught

  • ENGL 250:  Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
  • ENGL 255:  Early American Literature and Culture
  • ENGL 119: Intro to American Lit
  • RHET 105:  Writing and Research

Recent Publications

“The ‘vast gilded void’ of Leisure: Energy and Work in The House of Mirth.” Edith Wharton Review, vol. 40, no. 1-2, 2024. Forthcoming.

Morrow, Weston, and Alexis Schmidt. “Crashing the Academic Party: How to Successfully Enter Scholarly Conversations,” I Write, 6th ed. University of Illinois Rhetoric Program, 2023.