Genre studies

Genre studies focuses attention on questions of textual form: How does a particular genre function, and what are its effects?  Why does a writer prioritize a specific form?  How do genre conventions impact a text’s unfolding and readers’ comprehension?

Professor Kilcup’s interests include what she calls genre hybridity; her scholarship has shown how formal hierarchies demote non-traditional and popular writing, often eliding writing by cultural outsiders such as working-class, multicultural, and women authors.  By assessing their unusual aesthetic strategies, we better appreciate these writers’ rhetorical skill and cultural work. This analytical reorientation also advances reconceptualizations of canonical writers’ aesthetics.

Please click on the image above for examples of Professor Kilcup’s work in genre studies.