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College of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Katherine Ellison

Chair, Professor
Office
STV Stevenson Hall 409d
Office Hours
Thursdays 11:30-12:30
Office Phone
(309) 438-3667office
phone
Email
keellis@ilstu.eduemail
  • About
  • Education
  • Awards & Honors
  • Selected Research

Biography

A first-generation college graduate, I earned my BA in English from Indiana University-Indianapolis and my MA and PhD from Emory University. I am committed to helping students become critical readers and listeners, able to navigate our new world with resilience and joyful gratitude for the powers of the literate mind. I am passionate about history and its relevance today. In my archival investigations of the 17th and 18th centuries, I have found generations of women and writers from populations we have been taught never wrote or did not have intellectual freedom. They did. Often, they were the dominant voices of their generation, later silenced by acts of erasure. Let's break from these false assumptions about the past and use our knowledge of language, narrative, and storytelling to make a better future together.

Current Courses

ENG 499.002 Independent Research For The Master's Thesis

ENG 599.010 Research And Dissertation

ENG 599.310 Research And Dissertation Final Term

Teaching Interests & Areas

Trauma Studies, Media and Technology Studies, 17th- and 18th-Century Literature and Culture, Publishing Studies, Women Writers, Digital Humanities, AI and the Humanities

Research Interests & Areas

I study theories of historical trauma and the impact of technological mediation on the expression of suffering, with focus on the 17th and 18th centuries through the early 20th century. Recently, my work has explored secret writing and ciphering. I also work in media theory, book history, the history of women's writing, feminist theories of archival research, and disability studies, with interest in the history of representation of intellectual disabilities. I have recently become interested in the impact of genAI on literary studies and hosted an AI & the Humanities Symposium at ISU to bring together scholars across disciplines.

Ph D 18th-Century Literature

Emory University
Atlanta

MA 18th-Century Literature

Emory University
Atlanta

BA English

Indiana University
Indianapolis

Outstanding College Researcher Award

College of Arts and Sciences
2019

Outstanding College Teacher

College of Arts and Sciences
2015

University Research Initiative Award

Illinois State University
2010

Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement, Pre-Tenure

Illinois State University
2009

Department Nominee for Outstanding Teacher Award

2009

Sigma Tau Delta Faculty Appreciation Award

2009

College of Arts and Sciences Service Initiative Award, College Nominee

2008

Red Tassel Mortar Board Faculty Appreciation Award

2007

University Teaching Initiative Award

2007

English Education “Great Teaching Strategy” Award

2006

Sigma Tau Delta Faculty Appreciation Award

2006

Visiting Assistant Professor, Emory University

2005

The Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Full Year Fellowship

Folger Institute
2004

Dean's Teaching Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Emory University

2003

Culpepper Grant for Digitizing Poetry

Emory University
2000

English Studies Award

Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI)
1998

Faculty Medal of Distinction

School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University
1998

Graduate Fellowship

Department of English, Emory University
1998

Honors Research Grant: “Immediating the Hiroshima and Nagasaki

IUPUI
1997

Cavanaugh Award for Outstanding Liberal Arts Student

School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI
1996

Creative Writing Award

English Department, IUPUI
1996

Film Studies Award

English Department, IUPUI
1996

Performances and Exhibits

Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries
Katherine Ellison.

Book, Authored

Secret Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century: Theories and Practices of Cryptology
Katherine Ellison.
(2022), Cambridge University Press
A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers: Cryptography and the History of Literacy
Katherine Ellison, Susan Kim.
(2017), 346, Routledge
A Cultural History of Early Modern English Cryptography Manuals
Katherine Ellison.
(2016), Ashgate/Routledge
Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Defoe
Katherine Ellison, Kit Kincade, Holly Faith Nelson.
(2014), AMS Press
Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century Literature
Katherine Ellison.
(2006), Routledge

Book, Chapter

"Academic Exhaustion and the Afterlife of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert."
Katherine Ellison.
(2022), Collaborative Humanities Research and Pedagogy: The Networks of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert, Palgrave Macmillan
"Finding Connection in the Nomadic Life of Scholarship: John Matthews Manly's Letters and Unpublished Essays."
Katherine Ellison.
(2022), Collaborative Humanities Research and Pedagogy: The Networks of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert, Palgrave Macmillan
"Early Modern Ciphering and the Expression of Trauma"
Katherine Ellison.
(2021), Early Modern Trauma: Europe and the Atlantic World, University of Nebraska Press
"Ciphers and Gaming in Pleasure and War."
Katherine Ellison.
(2019), The Games of War in British and American Literature, 1600-1830, Amsterdam University Press
"Afterword: The Critical Legacy of Medieval and Early Modern Cryptography before and after World War I."
Katherine Ellison.
(2017), A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers, Routledge
"Ciphering and the Material History of Literacy"
Katherine Ellison.
(2017), A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers, Routledge
"Deciphering and the Exhaustion of Recombination"
Katherine Ellison.
(2017), A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers, Routledge
“Mediation and Intelligence in Defoe’s A Vision of the Angelic World.”
Katherine Ellison.
(2014), Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Defoe, AMS Press
“Erotic Death Machines: Sex and Execution in James Boswell’s Writings.”
Katherine Ellison.
(2013), 183-199, Sex and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature, Routledge
“Reading Our Foremothers: Victorian and Eighteenth-Century Literary Mothers and Millennial Readers.”
Katherine Ellison, Cynthia Huff.
(2011), 171-182, Maternal Pedagogies: In and Outside the Classroom, Demeter Press

Book, Edited

Collaborative Humanities Research and Pedagogy: The Networks of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
Katherine Ellison, Susan Kim.
(2022), Palgrave Macmillan

Journal Article

"Defoe and the Chatbot: The Emotional Avoidance of Predictive Prose."
Katherine Ellison.
Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries, 15 (1), (2024)
"Media Scholarship and Eighteenth-Century Studies."
Katherine Ellison.
Literature Compass, 1-12, (2017)
’1144000727777607680000 wayes’: Early Modern Cryptography and Fashionable Mathematics
Katherine Ellison.
Journal of the Northern Renaissance, (6), (2015)
Digital Scholarship as Handwork and Brainwork: An Early Modern History of Cryptography
Katherine Ellison.
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 13 (4), 29-46, (2014)
“Millions of Millions of Distinct Orders: Multimodality in Seventeenth-Century Cryptography Manuals.”
Katherine Ellison.
Book History, (14), 1-24, (2011)
“Virtual History: A Socially-Networked Pedagogy of Enlightenment.”
Katherine Ellison, Carol Matthews.
Educational Research, 52 (3), 297-307, (2010)
“Heroic Sustainability: Composing Virtual Gardens.”
Katherine Ellison.
Academic Exchange Quarterly, 13 (4), 141-145, (2009)
“Cryptogrammatophoria: The Romance and Novelty of Losing Readers in Code.”
Katherine Ellison.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 20 (3), 287-311, (2008)
“James Boswell’s Revisions of Death as The Hypochondriack and in the London Journals.”
Katherine Ellison.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 20 (4), 37-59, (2008)

Presentations

“From 1719 to 2019: Daniel Defoe’s Legacy in the Public Opinion of Intelligence and Cryptology.”
Katherine Ellison.
Symposium on Cryptologic History, Baltimore, MD, October 18, 2019
"Defoe and the Hypothetical"
Katherine Ellison.
Defoe Society Conference, York, July, 2019