Professor Nancy Glazener came to Pitt English fresh from completing her Stanford PhD in 1990. Her focus was on the realist novel of the “long” nineteenth century, which encompasses the period between the French Revolution and the start of the First World War. Students who get a rush picking up a hefty book from what is arguably the peak of the novel’s ascent in Western culture have since then found a home in her classrooms. Elise Ryan, who is a teaching assistant professor in the department’s Literature program, experienced that rush as an undergrad in Glazener’s Junior Seminar in American Literature, completing her BA in 2006. “With clarity, kindness, and wit, Nancy gave us foundational skills in close reading and in practicing extended research, but she also helped us understand trauma studies and critical argumentation from historical and historiographic perspectives. The position papers I wrote in that class prepared me for the mini-presentations and classroom environment of graduate school,” Ryan said.
In addition to teaching and mentoring undergrads, Glazener has served as the department’s director of graduate studies, chaired dozens of PhD dissertation committees, and sat on project and MFA committees as well. Since the 1990s, she has been a member of the Steering Committee for the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program (GSWS—originally the Women’s Studies Program) and been a crucial part of GSWS’s growth from a certificate-only program to a full major. The “service” portion of her career bespeaks her characteristic generosity, overlapping with impressive academic accomplishments, including two book-length studies, Literature in the Making: A History of U. S. Literary Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford UP, 2016) and Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910 (Duke UP, 1997), and multiple articles, national and international lectures, and conference presentations. Moreover, Glazener’s strong background in feminist theory has helped prepare next-generation Pitt scholars for work in academia and beyond.
“I always felt attended to in Nancy’s class; she took my presence and my language seriously, which made me take myself and my work more seriously. When I joined Pitt’s English department faculty, Nancy was one of the first people to reach-out to me and to meet with me. That she remembered me after all these years again gave me that sense of being attended to and again challenged me to take the work of teaching and research with the same seriousness, generosity, and verve that I’ve always known from her,” Ryan recalled.
John Musser, a teaching assistant professor in GSWS, called Glazener “a wise mentor, a great colleague, a formidable teacher, and someone who’s quite interested in the lives of those around her.”
Musser continued: “Before we became colleagues, I benefited from Nancy’s tutelage nearly 20 years ago in her Junior Seminar classroom, where I can still remember the exact turns of phrase in her written feedback on my work. ‘Good collegiate effort’ she wrote of a lackluster presentation. Fortunately, because Nancy also shows real human interest in the lives of her students, this feedback didn’t sting as much as it might have. Instead, I rose to the challenge. I remember later asking her about graduate school, and the thoughtfulness of her response showed me that maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea. Some of you might have had similar experiences with Nancy. She liberally shares enthusiastic support for her students’ and colleagues’ work, and if you’ve ever personally experienced this, then you might know how it sets the tone for collegiality and human empathy in our own corners of the university.”
In her retirement, Glazener plans to carry forward her next book project, Craving Murders: Our Obsession with Detective Fiction, which, she wrote, “aims primarily at a more-than-academic audience though seeks to interest academics as well.” The detective novel took shape in the nineteenth century, and it’s clearly—despite so many homicides—alive and well today. Like a detective, Glazener has been following the crime novel to its earliest traces (think of Hamlet as an early modern whodunnit). The work, which will include illustrations and copious historical sourcing, “considers the various kinds of pleasures, disruptions, and reassurances offered by detective works in relation to psychology, neuroscience, narratology, and cultural theory.” Glazener’s interdisciplinary approach promises to help us understand why our culture can’t stop watching [and reading] the detectives.
—Ellen McGrath Smith