Faculty

Frances A. Chiu has taught history and literature at The New School (SPE and Lang) since 2002. Her courses include Haunted Nations: The Politics of Horror, Class Inequality in America, The Age of Paine (arguably the first course in the US to focus on Paine), Fiction of Men and Women,  Introduction to Cultural Studies, and Introduction to Literary Studies. In 2009, she organized a symposium, “‘A New Age for Politics’: Thomas Paine and the Rise of Modern Liberalism” at the New School, and in 2011, she was nominated for a Distinguished University Teaching Award.

Chiu serves on the editorial boards of Anthem Press Gothic Studies and Reading the Gothic, an imprint of Manchester University Press. (She helped develop the series.) She has peer reviewed for Anthem Press, French History, History of Political Thought, Le Fanu Studies, and Mosaic.

In her spare time, Chiu is a developmental editor, book coach, and proprietor of Wilde(st) Dreams Editing and Dissertation Coaching. Since 2023, she had helped nine book authors win awards, including an Anthem award, the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY); the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA); the Next Generation Indie Book Award; IAN Book of the Year Award; the Golden Door Silver Medal; and the PenCraft Spring Best Book Award.

Smith College, A.B.

Northwestern University, M.A.

Oxford University, Ph.D.

Monographs: 

Reading the Gothic: Matthew Lewis’ The Monk. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Forthcoming, 2027.

The Routledge Guidebook to Paine's Rights of Man. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2020.  

Scholarly Editions:

J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Rose and the Key (1871), Kansas City: Valancourt Books, 2007. Critical introduction to the novel, notes, and appendices. 

Ann Radcliffe, Gaston de Blondeville (1826), Chicago: Valancourt Books, 2006. Critical introduction to the novel, notes, and appendices. Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (June 1, 2007).

Ann Radcliffe, Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, Peterborough, Canada: Broadview. Forthcoming.

Select peer-reviewed publications:

Critical introduction to Mary Hays. In Scribner’s British Writers Supplement,  XXIII. Chief Editor: Jay Parini. New York: Gale Cengage Learning, 2016. Pp. 139-59.

“Faulty Towers: Reform, Radicalism and the Gothic Castle, 1760-1800,” Romanticism on the Net 44, December 2006 http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2006/v/n44/013996ar.html

“From Nobodaddies to Noble Daddies: Writing Political and Paternal Authority in Fiction of the 1780s and ‘90s” in Eighteenth-century Life, Spring 2002. Pp. 1-22.

“Hollywood Vampires, 1950-1979.” In The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. Ed. Simon Bacon. 2023. 

“Hollywood: Vampires in Hollywood, 1985-2020.” In Vampire States of America. Ed. Simon Bacon, Routledge, 2025. Pp. 55-68.

"Mary Hays and Mary, Queen of Scots," in History from Loss, ed. Marnie Hughes-Warrington and Daniel Woolf. (Presented at the History from Loss symposium, Feb. 22-25, 2022.) Routledge, 2023.

“Reform, Revolution and the relevance of Frankenstein in 2020” in Frankenstein Reanimated: Conversations with Artists in Dystopian Times. Ed. by Marc Garrett and Yiannis Colakides. London: Torque, 2022. Pp. 33-44.

Reviews: Review of Gary Crawford, ed. Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu in Gothic Studies, November 2013, pp. 108-110. Review of Helen Braithwaite’s Romanticism, Publishing, and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty in Romanticism on the Net 40, November 2005 http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2005/v/n40/012468ar.html.

Review of Scott Cleary’s The Field of Imagination: Thomas Paine and eighteenth-century poetry and Edward Gray’s The Daily Thomas Paine: A Year of Common-Sense Quotes for a Nonsensical Age in Eighteenth-century Studies, Spring 2021, pp.1016-18.

Select Popular Publications:

"Ca Ira: Why Does the FRench Revolution Still Matter 235 Years Later?" https://medium.com/counterarts/ça-ira-why-does-the-french-revolution-still-matter-235-years-later-8dbe1facafb0

"Carmilla: Of Ireland,m Vampires, and British Imperialism," https://medium.com/counterarts/carmilla-of-ireland-vampires-and-british-imperialism-568d095fb3ac

"Reverse Racism and a Holiday Tempest n a Teapot," https://medium.com/an-injustice/reverse-racism-and-a-holiday-tempest-in-a-boston-teapot-7d18e41b111d

"Tragic America: Theodore Dreiser's Critique of American Capitalism," https://medium.com/counterarts/tragic-america-theodore-dreiser-s-critique-of-capitalism-aa3bd07bf6fc

"Who was the first Englishman to Propose American Independence?" https://medium.com/counterarts/who-was-the-first-englishman-to-propose-american-independence-250-years-ago-1131f8a9873c