Dr. Homestead joined the faculty at UNL in 2005 as an associate professor of English and was promoted to full professor in 2013. Her research focuses on the history of American women’s literary authorship from the Early Republic through the early 20th century. Her book American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869 examines how popular white women novelists negotiated copyright law and laws restricting the ability of married women to own property. She maintains an ongoing research interest in 19th-century American women authors, including E.D.E.N. Southworth, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Sarah Orne Jewett, but also works on twentieth-century novelist Willa Cather and directs the Cather Project in the Department of English. Her book The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis was published in 2021.
Dr. Homestead teaches the cross-listed courses in women’s writing at all levels, as well as 900 level graduate seminars on American women’s writing. She has also taught a theme seminar for the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies graduate certificate program on “Queering the Nineteenth Century” and a 300-level course on “Queer U.S. 19th century literature.” When she’s not in Andrews Hall, you can find Dr. Homestead taking long strolls with her senior basset hounds, Simon and Roberta, or at home hanging out with her hounds and with her cats Annabelle, Bessie, Bob, and John.