Clare Callahan is a community-engaged teacher and scholar of American literature, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Black Studies, poverty and working-class studies, and health humanities. She develops cross-disciplinary initiatives and facilitates co-curricular programming in and beyond the university. She is based in Durham, North Carolina.
Currently an assistant professor of English at Elon University and an adjunct instructor with the Focus program at Duke University, Dr. Callahan received her Ph.D. in English from Duke University in 2016 and a B.A. in English and anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005.
Her current research focuses on depictions in early to mid-twentieth century American literature of poor and working-class women’s creative survival strategies. She also studies health narratives in contemporary U.S. women’s novels, which will form the basis of her second book.
Dr. Callahan has developed and assisted with directing various humanities initiatives. Most significantly, while the Program Coordinator at the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, she secured an NEH Digital Projects for the Public grant to collect and digitally curate community health narratives from underserved communities in central Texas with the goal of promoting health literacy. This work has served as a foundation for her community-engaged teaching; she is currently partnering with several non-profit organizations serving low-income communities in central North Carolina.
Recent & Forthcoming Publications
“Poverty Futures.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 585-591.
How Literature Understands Poverty, special issue of American Literature, vol. 94, no. 3, 2022. [Co-edited with Joseph Entin, Kinohi Nishikawa, and Irvin Hunt].
“Abandoned Being: The Aesthetics of Inhabiting in Meridel Le Sueur’s The Girl.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 67, no. 3, 2021, pp. 317-344.
Works in Progress
Abandoned Subjects: The Sociality of Survival in Modern American Literature (under advance contract).
Recent & Upcoming Talks
“Song of the Poor: Negotiating Worth in Anzia Yezierska’s Salome of the Tenements,” Working-Class Studies Association, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, December 2-5, 2025.
“Personhood, Self-Valorization and the Dream of ‘Making Things Better’ in Anzia Yezierska’s Arrogant Beggar,” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 20-23, 2025.