Megan Sweeney

Megan Sweeney is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her publications include a collection of autotheoretical essays, Mendings (Duke Press, 2023); an award-winning monograph, Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (UNC Press, 2010): an edited collection, The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading (UI Press, 2012); lyric essays; and numerous articles about autotheory, African American literature, reading, and incarceration published in venues such as Feminist Studies, PMLA, and Modern Fiction Studies. Sweeney is a recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, the Ford Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Deeply committed to teaching and mentoring, Sweeney has received the John H. D'Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities (2021), the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award (2010), and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship (2014), the university's highest award for undergraduate teaching. She currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English Language & Literature.