Janet Lyon

Janet Lyon is an associate professor of English; Science, Technology & Society; and Women's Studies. Her scholarship focuses mainly on modernism, and especially its historical, sociological, and philosophical contexts in Ireland, Great Britain, and the global reaches of the British empire. Her first book, Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern, offers a history and a theory of the manifesto form, beginning in 1640 and focusing on its use by modernist and avant-garde groups. She is completing a book titled The Perfect Hostess: Sociability and Modernism, which studies the salons, at-homes, wild parties, pub crawls, and tea-house poetry groups in the modernist moment. She also works in Disability Studies, focusing especially on the emergence of "disability" as a category in the modernist period. Her articles have appeared in Modernism/modernity, ELH, Yale Journal of Criticism and other journals in the field. She is an editor of Journal of Modern Literature. She is on the faculty of Penn State's summer study abroad program in Ireland. Her most recent teaching award is the Penn State Alumni and Student Teaching Award (2010).