Faculty/Staff Detail
Denise D. Knight
Denise D. Knight is a Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita of Nineteenth-Century American Literature at the State University of New York College at Cortland. She is the author of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction and the editor of fifteen books on Gilman and on nineteenth-century American authors. She published nearly seventy articles, essays, and introductions before her retirement in 2016 and is currently working on an essay on Gilman and hibernophobia. Knight has also presented over sixty papers nationally and internationally, most recently in Dublin in June 2018. The recipient of SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, as well as a Distinguished Alumni Award from the State University of New York at Albany, Knight is delighted to be teaching again part-time in the English department. Her passion away from academia is rescuing abused and abandoned animals.
Education
B.A., English, (Summa Cum Laude), State University of New York at Albany (1983)
M.A., English, State University of New York at Albany (1985)
D.A., English, State University of New York at Albany (1986)
Labor Relations Certificate, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations (1981)
Publications
Authored Books and Critical Editions:
In This Our World and Uncollected Poetry by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, co-edited with Gary Scharnhorst, Syracuse University Press, 2012.
The Selected Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, co-edited with Jennifer S. Tuttle, University of Alabama Press, 2009.
Ethan Frome and Summer, by Edith Wharton, ed. Denise D. Knight, New Riverside Editions, 2004.
Herland and Selected Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Denise D. Knight, Penguin Classics, 1999.
The Abridged Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Denise D. Knight, University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Studies in Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers, 1997.
Unpunished: A Detective Novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, co-edited with Catherine J. Golden, Feminist Press, 1997.
The Later Poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Denise D. Knight, University of Delaware Press, 1996.
The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 2 vols., ed., Denise D. Knight, University Press of Virginia, 1994.
“The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Selected Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Denise D. Knight, University of Delaware Press, 1994.
Cotton Mather's Verse in English, ed. Denise D. Knight, University of Delaware Press, 1989.
Edited Essay Collections:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries: Literary and Intellectual Contexts, co-edited with Cynthia J. Davis, University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Writers of the American Renaissance: an A-Z Guide, ed. Denise D. Knight, Greenwood Press, 2003.
Approaches to Teaching Gilman’s Herland and “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, co-edited with Cynthia J. Davis, Modern Language Association, 2002.
Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Denise D. Knight, Greenwood Press, 1997. (Winner of a 1997 Outstanding Academic Book Award from the American Library Association.)
Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, co-edited with Sandra Pollack, Greenwood Press, 1993. (Winner of a 1993 Outstanding Reference Source Award from the American Library Association.)
Recent Articles and Essays:
“A `solitary song’: Identity, Agency, and Motherhood in Wharton’s Summer,” American Literary Realism, Fall 2018.
“`[a] country of whose language I knew not a word’: Gilman on and in Italy,” in Cultures in Conversation, edited by Beth Lueck et al, University of New England Press, 2017.
“Artistic Renderings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” (invited); in Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Place, edited by Jill Bergman, University of Alabama Press, 2017.
“Prospects for the Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Resources for American Literary Study, Vol. 36, August 2013.