Susan Johnston

Biography

Susan Johnston joined the English Department in 1995, where she teaches and supervises undergraduate and graduate work in Victorian literature, literary historiography, and, more recently, fantasy literature. Recent 19th century classes have included Reading the Victorian Home; Victorian Masculinities; Victorian Crimes and Misdemeanours; Nationhood and Nationalism in the Long 19th Century; in fantasy and popular culture, she has offered such topics as Fantasy After Tolkien and single author classes in both J.K. Rowling and George R.R. Martin as well as graduate classes in Screening the Novel. She also teaches first-year English and has conducted research on student learning supports for the first year classroom. She has published and presented on adaptation, popular culture, and fantasy literature, including articles on fantasy and theology such as “Harry Potter, Eucatastrophe, and Christian Hope” in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture in 2011 and a related article on dyscatastrophe called “Grief poignant as joy: Dyscatastrophe and Eucatastrophe in A Song of Ice and Fire” in Mythlore in 2012. In 2015 she co-edited Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on A Song of Ice and Fire (McFarland) with her colleague Jes Battis, and she is presently working on a book on A Song of Ice and Fire tentatively entitled “Bastards and Broken Things.” In it, she argues that the interplay of history and fantasy, comedy and tragedy, dyscatastrophe and eucatastrophe in Martin’s work point to an overarching concern with betweenness and brokenness, and reads Martin’s epic through its representation of imperfection and brokenness, so as to trace Martin’s idea of the human and the “monster,” both of history and of fantasy.

Research Interest

19th century British literature and culture; literary historiography; nationhood and nationalism; masculinities; theological criticism; film and television adaptation; popular culture, particularly fantasy literature, Harry Potter studies, and George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones).