Feminized Work and the Labor of Literature

Emily J. Hogg is Associate Professor of Contemporary Anglophone Literature at the Department of Culture and Language, University of Southern Denmark. She is the co-editor of Feminized Work and the Labor of Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) and Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture (2021). Charlotte J. Fabricius is a Postdoc with the project ‘Feminized: A New Literary History of Women’s Work’ at the Center for Uses of Literature, University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in cultural studies and works in the intersection of global and digital anglophone literature, comics studies, and feminist critique. She is the author of Super-Girls of the Future: Girlhood and Agency in Contemporary Superhero Comics (2023).

What is the relation between work and books, between women’s labor and women’s writing? And how does women’s work cut across standard divisions of space and time? This collection of case studies, prefaced by an incisive and comprehensive introduction, offers illuminating answers.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction. New Literary Perspectives on Women’s WorkCharlotte J. Fabricius and Emily J. HoggPART I. THE LABOUR OF LITERATURE1. Feminist Bibliography: Aki Hayashi, Literary AssistantNicola Wilson2. Reading Women’s Work in the Karen Brahe LibraryLucie Duggan3. The Labours of Shakespeare’s SistersVarsha PanjwaniPART II. THE WORK OF CHANGE4. Comics in the RESISTance: Modelling the Feminized Work of ActivismLeah Misemer5. Mothers of Invention: New Maternal Writings, Women, and Precarious Work CultureRoberta Garrett6. Terror as Usual: Gender Based Violence and Women’s Work in Cherie Jones’ How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her HouseLeighan RenaudPART III. THE EMPLOYMENT OF FORM7. Scrappy Time: Domestic Work and Adrienne Rich’s Literary FragmentLindsay Turner8. Cheap Talk: Conversation, Gender, and Labour in Talking to Women, The Pumpkin Eater, and The Golden NotebookHelen Charman9. Problems with Progress: Reading Transhistorically for Feminized Work in Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen IdaAaskov Dolmer and Emily J. HoggAfterword: Women’s Work Across ContextsChristina LuptonIndex