Rachael DeWitt

I am a writer, researcher, and teacher working at the intersection of the environmental humanities, nineteenth-century American literature, and sex and gender studies. I am a Lecturer in Columbia University’s Department of English and Comparative Literature. In 2023 I received my Ph.D. in English from UC Davis. I have a forthcoming article in PMLA on the ecological implications of Thoreau’s genderqueer housekeeping at Walden. Broadly conceived, my research explores genre, biography, and ecology. I ask questions about how different forms of social reproduction constitute a range of relationships with the natural environment.

My dissertation, “Extra-Domestic Ecologies” assembles an unexpected, trans-inclusive archive of women writers from the long-nineteenth century whose texts articulate ecological dynamics and queer kinships that were once a pronounced—and now largely forgotten—element of American discourse on family and home. My current working paper explores the ecological relations afforded by Alice Dunbar Nelson’s fraught portraits of social reproduction. Both my pedagogy and my scholarship considers how emotions and language shape our ability to respond to collective crises.

My writing has appeared in ESQ, Configurations, ISLE, and The Concord Saunterer. I co-edit the New Book Forum, a project C19’s Graduate Student Collective. In 2015, I received an M.A. in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah.

You can find more information on my CV (below).

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions about my research or teaching. I can be found at r.dewitt@columbia.edu.