Rachel Slaughter

Rachel Slaughter received her PhD in English Literature from Washington University.  Her dissertation, “The Aristocracy of Consciousness:  Connoisseurship in Modern Literature” (2007), examines the role of aesthetic judgment in American ex-patriot literature. She contributed as a research assistant to Langdon Hammer’s James Merrill:  Life and Art (2015), the first biography of the well-known formalist poet.  In addition she published a portfolio of Merrill’s “The Doodler” in The Paris Review and a digital resource for scholars of Merrill, “‘Lost in Translation’:  Revision as Complication.”  Since 2001, at Washington University and elsewhere, she has taught a variety of writing courses as well as literature courses on Jane Austen, Illness in Literature, Humor in Literature, and Class Consciousness.  She is currently working on a family and life-narrative course.