This year the Margaret Fuller Society (MFS) is spending time getting to know its leaders and members who live all over the world. This month we honor the work of MFS Board Member and Racial Justice Committee Member Dr. Eagan Dean, who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University.
Q: What might MFS members ask you about?
A: Trans studies, finishing your dissertation, Fuller family materials at Harvard, book history, publishing in Scholarly Editing.
Q: What’s something about Fuller that you find inspiring?
A: I’m inspired by her creative thought about gender and by her tenacity. She knew her ideas about gender nonconformity in particular were not well received and her scholarly style was often derided, especially by male peers. This did not deter her. I admire her commitment to her own research insights in the the face of skepticism. My favorite quote is about encouraging gender nonconforming people to thrive in whatever life brings them joy, especially for young women. She writes, “Fourier had observed…one third of women as likely to have a taste for masculine pursuits, one third of men for feminine…no need to clip the wings of any bird that wants to soar and sing, or finds in itself the strength of pinion for a migratory flight unusual to its kind.”
Q: What would you like to see the MFS accomplish in the next five years?
In the next five years I would love to see MFS build on its success with the social service award to continue developing relationships with organizations and scholars focused on racial justice. Perhaps we might take a page from Fuller’s critiques of American prison to build connections with abolitionist thinkers and organizers. I am so proud to be part of an author’s society that is invested in our author’s living legacy in the world, not only as a literary figure but also as an engaged critic of social wrongs.
Q: What is one thing you’ve learned or accomplished in the last year?
A: I am very proud of defending my dissertation! I’m excited to have the time and space to think about the wider conversations I can join in the book version of the project.
Q: Where could Fuller Society members go to learn more about your writing and research?
A: Fuller is very core to my work. For more on trans studies, I recommend “Androgyny and Desire.” For more book history, I recommend ““Woman in the Nineteenth Century and the Politics of Reprinting.”
“Androgyny and Desire: Margaret Fuller, Julia Ward Howe, and Fractured Trans Archives.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 40 no. 1, 2023, p. 59-84.
“Woman in the Nineteenth Century and the Politics of Reprinting, 1845-1980.” ESQ 69.1 (2022): 39-72.
Eagan Dean (they/he) is a scholar of American cultural and literary history. He is currently a Postdoctoral research fellow with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and serves as co-editor of the “Essays” section in Scholarly Editing. Their research uses archival and literary analysis to understand the origins of contemporary beliefs about gender and transgender life. His work argues that current conversations about transgender experience are inseparably intertwined with the ideologies of race, colonialism, and misogyny which shaped the early U.S. Eagan Dean is completing his book manuscript, Inventing American Gender: Nineteenth Century American Literary Gender and its Uses. The monograph demonstrates that historical U.S. texts produced gender identities anew as rhetorical tools and used these tools to advance the political investments of their authors pertaining to racial and colonial power.
Prior to joining the Clayman Institute, Dean completed a PhD in Literatures in English with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. At Rutgers, he won several teaching awards and essay prizes, including the Excellence in Leadership and Teaching Award. This award recognized his development of new trans history curricula and work with community nonprofits.