Dr. David Hennessee

Degree	Major Emphasis	Institution	Year
Ph.D.	English	University of Washington	2001
M.A.	English	University of Washington	1996
B.A.	English	University of Oklahoma	1994

Professional Certifications

Professional Certificate in Grant Writing, San Diego State University, 2019
Certificate in Effective College Instruction, Association of College and University Educators and the American Council on Education, 2021

 

Teaching and Research Interests

Composition
19^th and 20^th-Century British Literature
Great Books III
LGBTQ Literature and Media 

Selected Publications

• “Queer Nostalgia in Mad Men" (Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, June 2017)
• "Historicizing the Politics of Representation in Contemporary Queer Media" (Teaching Media Quarterly, Spring 2015) http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=tmq
• "Encouraging Reader Identification with LGBT Literary Characters Through Role-play."  In Activities for Teaching Gender and Sexuality in the University Classroom, edited by Michael Murphy and Beth Ribarsky (Rowman and Littlefield Education) 2013
• "Gentlemanly Guilt and Masochistic Fantasy in Great Expectations" (Dickens Studies Annual, Issue 34, Summer 2004).
• "Some Thoughts on Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire." (Moebius 2010).  https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/moebius/vol8/iss1/35/ 
• Review of Thomas Carlyle Resartus: Reappraising Carlyle's Contribution to the Philosophy of History, Political Theory, and Cultural Criticism (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Issue 59-60, Fall 2011) https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ravon/2011-n59-60-ravon0382/1013290ar/ 
• Review of Richard Dellamora’s  Friendship’s Bonds: Democracy and the Novel in Victorian England. (Nineteenth- Century Gender Studies, Fall 2006). http://ncgsjournal.com/issue23/hennessee.htm
•  Review of John Ulrich’s  Signs of Their Times: History, Labor and the Body in Cobbett, Carlyle, and Disraeli (Nineteenth-Century Contexts (Volume 27, Number 1, March 2005).
• Review of Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. (Moebius 2006).  http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1157&context=moebius

Conference Presentations

• “Respectability and Resistance: Ideological Conflict in Gentleman Jack.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, November 2025, San Francisco.
• “Mixed Messages: Queer Representation in Contemporary Television.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, November 2024, Palm Springs.
• “Call Me Mother: The Rhetoric of Family in RuPaul’s Drag Race and the MoM Podcast Network.” Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture Association, October 2023, Chicago.
• “Recent Trends in Queer Villainy” Film and History conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 2018.
• "Bricolage and Families of Choice in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." Film and History conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 2017.
• "Closet Cases and Gay Best Friends: the Queer Detours of Mad Men." Film and History conference, Madison, Wisconsin, November 2015.
• "Homophobic Microaggressions in 30 Rock." Film and History conference, Madison, Wisconsin, October 2014.
• "Asexual Austen" National Women's Studies Association Conference.  Cincinnati, November 2013.
• "With faith that comes of self-control': Tennyson's Spiritual Self-Help." Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Chicago, February 2007.
• "Teaching the 19th Century to 21st-Century General Education Students." College English Association, San Antonio, April 2006.
• "'Sorrow is the ultimate type in both life and Art': Masochistic Aestheticism in Wilde's De Profundis," Northeast Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh, March 2004.
• "Trans/en-gendering the Rock Musical: Hedwig and the Angry Inch." Mid-Atlantic Popular American Culture Association, Pittsburgh, November 2002.
• "Carlyle's Hero-Worship and the Public Schools." Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, Boise State University, October 2002.

Awards and Honors

• Heilman Dissertation Award, 2001 (outstanding dissertation, University of Washington Department of English).
• Graduation with Special Honors (4.0 GPA), University of Oklahoma, 1994.