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, 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. Her newest book Monstrous Bitch: A Long History of Terrifying Women is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in Fall 2026. She is also the Poetry Section editor at Public Books (publicbooks.org).
