Wendy Moffat Associate Professor of English  phone: 717.245.1499 fax: 717.245.1942 moffat@dickinson.edu Curriculum Vitae

My biography of the modern British writer E.M. Forster entitled A Great Unrecorded History": A New Life of E.M. Forster will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Bloomsbury in the U.K. early in 2010. The title is a quote from a letter Forster wrote in 1916, when he confided to a friend that he saw his own love affair with an Egyptian man as part of a larger suppressed story of homosexual history. Almost all his life homosexuality was illegal. Forster was sixteen when Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for "gross indecency" ; he died--at 91--the year after the Stonewall riots. In his private life, with his lovers and friends, and within remarkably-developed gay communities, he embraced his sexuality; it came to define his writing, his friendships, in fact every part of his life. By the time he was thirty ,before the First World War, Forster was a great and famous novelist, celebrated for his dark vein of social comedy and his sinewy wit. His early novels poked fun at British self-satisfaction. Howards End and A Passage to India yielded to a more tragic vision. But after A Passage to India was published in 1924, a curious silence. One of the most prominent novelists of his time appeared to simply cease writing fiction at the relatively young age of forty-five. For the next fifty years Forster honed a public voice, entering political fights from the position of the underdog.  He protested against fascism, against censorship, against communism, against “Jew Consciousness,” against the British occupation of Egypt and India, against racism and jingoism and anything that smelled of John Bull.  One famous line had special bite. He wrote "I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." Forster raised his public voice, tremulously, often alone, against the edifice of conformity. But in private he preserved a vast archive of his experience as a sexual outsider in his own country. And he kept writing"unpublishable" stories, essays, and letters--a testament to his "great unrecorded history." In this long strange, very modern life, we encounter an astonishing range of characters, from D. H. Lawrence to "Lawrence of Arabia," from Virginia Woolf to Sir John Wolfenden, from Lytton Strachey to Liberace.Forster befriended both the Victorian sage Edward Carpenter and the modern sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey. It has taken a decade to research and write this book. Using unpublished archival material, photos, and interviews with surviving friends, my biography is the first work to integrate Forster's public and private lives and show just how his sexuality shaped his life, his work, and his politics. A Great Unrecorded History is a biography of the heart. Forster's life observed through the lens of his sexuality offers us a radically new view of a life we thought we knew.
Cover image: E. M. Forster by George Platt Lynes, New York, 1949. Copyright the Estate of George Platt Lynes,image used with permission of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
	Click on the map to the left to enlarge it. It comes from Baedeker's Egypt, 1914. Forster used this guidebook to orient himself during the years he lived and worked in Alexandria, during the First World War. Thanks to Betty Sams for the loan of this precious book.
Teaching: I have taught at Dickinson since 1984. In 1994 I received the Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching.  Both my undergraduate and graduate work was at Yale University. I have published on modern British fiction, on photography, on Jane Austen and feminism, on teaching, curriculum development, and building a sense of community in English departments. In addition to my teaching at Dickinson, I have been active in the Association of Departments of English of the Modern Language Association, serving as ADE President in 2004. The International Society for the Study of Narrative and the Modernist Studies Association have offered me a safe place and fertile ground to try out my ideas over the years. I serve on the editorial board of Literature Compass, an online journal for undergraduates. Here is the URL for their website, with useful and accessible articles : http://www.literature-compass.com/ In my teaching I encourage students to work hard and to think for themselves. My courses demand a lot of reading. My mantra is "make new mistakes."
Student Faculty Research   I have been honored to receive support from the Dana Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Dickinson's Research and Development Committee and the Office of Global Education to work with promising undergraduates on my Forster biography. Here is a short essay by Sara Hoover '03 on our work together.   Roger Brubaker '03, Sara Hoover and I presented a paper at the University of London called "Bllomsbury in Pennsylvania" on the Bloomsbury Group Exhibit in the library.To the right are Roger and Sara communing with the auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham at the University of London. Three classes I have taught recently culminated in student-run exhibitions in Waidner-Spahr Library.   In the Fall 2008, students in my Forster's England course presented a library exhibit of their work. Entitled "On the Outside Looking In," the exhibit observed early 20th century British history culture through Forster's life and works. Photos: Pierce Bounds. Students in the Fall 2002 Senior Seminar on Bloomsbury and the Idea of the Literary Circle put together an exhibit called "Moments of Being." The title is a quote from an essay by Virginia Woolf. Click here to see slides of the exhibit
Teaching I teach modern British fiction, the history and theory of narrative, sexuality, modernism, and British culture. A Selection of Courses Taught: On Modernism: Sexuality and Modernism Modern British Novel: The Modernist Moment James Joyce's Ulysses Forster's England Bloomsbury and the Idea of the Literary Circle Bloomsbury and the Idea of the Literary Circle (300 level) Homosexuality and Modernism Woolf and Joyce Public and Private Voices in Woolf, Forster, and Orwell 18th and 19th Century Literature: Jane Austen in Her Time (100 level) 19th Century British Literature and Society Jane Austen in Her Time (300 level) The Origins of the English Novel History of the Novel In Theory and Methods: Critical Approaches and Literary Methods History of Literary Theory The Novel and Literary Theory Fiction and Narrative Film Reader Response Criticism Senior Writing Workshop Courses Taught Abroad: London as a Text East Anglia: An Interdisciplinary Approach First Year Seminars: Victorian London  Campus Culture
	Click on the map to the left to enlarge it. It comes from Baedeker's Egypt, 1914. Forster used this guidebook to orient himself during the years he lived and worked in Alexandria, during the First World War.   Forster also lived at Kings College, Cambridge, in Weybridge, and London.
One thing I really care about is dogs.   Fritz (left) and Archie (right); Eliot (left below) and Fritz. ( Forster liked cats. ) More photos of dogs. In 1997-8 my family and I lived in Norwich, England, where I served as  Director of the Dickinson Programmes in Norwich at the University of East  Anglia.    There will always be an England: Rubbish bin in North London. Click the image for information on study programs in London and Norwich, England.    English Department | Department Directory