Eleanor B Johnson
Research Interests
Poetry and Poetics, Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies, Ancient and Medieval Myth and Epic, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Science and Environmental Studies, Law and Humanities, Philosophy, Aesthetics, History of Ideas, and Sociology of Knowledge, Europe
Biography
B.A, Yale University (2001); Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (2009).
Professor Johnson specializes in late medieval literature, medieval theology, the history of environmental thought, horror, film, and feminism. She has published three books on the Middle Ages: Practicing Literary Theory in the Late Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve (Chicago 2013); Dramatizing Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama (Chicago 2018); and Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England (Chicago 2023). Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (Atria 2025) analyzes the relationship between horror films and feminism in the 1970s and 2020s. Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women (Princeton 2026) analyzes the 4000 year history of the demonization of women by western patriarchy. Her forthcoming book Mother of Frankenstein (Atria 2027) looks at the shaping influence of Mary Shelley's novel on 21st-century cinematic feminism.
