Janice L. Doane papers (MS.2024.008)

Biographical/Historical Note

Janice L. Doane was born August 10, 1950 in Louisville, KY. She was a scholar of literary criticism and history and "Women's studies and issues" at Saint Mary's College of California where she taught courses in English and composition for 33 years. Doane served as chair of the English Department and revised the curriculum during her tenure. She developed the department's foundational courses and restructured the American literature survey to include the voices of women and people of color.

Doane attended the State University of New York at Buffalo for her B.A. and graduated cum laude in 1972 and she earned her Ph.D. there in 1981. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Doane was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University from 1983 through 1984. Her first book, Telling Incest: Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels of Gertrude Stein, published in 1986, was followed by full-length studies of literature and culture co-written with Devon L. Hodges. These include Nostalgia and Sexual Difference: The Resistance to Contemporary Feminism (1987); From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Search for the "Good Enough" Mother (1992); and Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire (2001). These books are highly regarded within the fields of feminist theory and feminist literary criticism. In addition to her books, Doane published numerous articles and reviews and presented essays at national and international conferences, including Narrative an International Conference. Doane was a reviewer of scholarly work on Gertrude Stein, women's literature, feminist theory, and trauma studies. In 2015, she was recognized by Saint Mary's College with the award Researcher-Scholar. Doane died in 2018.