Joan Roberts
Emerita
English Department
Degrees earned
A.B., Nazareth College of Rochester, 1951
M.A. University of Cincinnati, 1969
Ph.D. University of Cincinnati, 1975
Courses taught
Freshmen English, Introduction to Poetry, Survey of English Literature 110 and 111, Victorian Literature, The Genesis of Mystery/Detective Fiction, Women in Literature, and team-taught Humanities courses with Lee Snyder, Michael Johnson, and David Landrey
Publications
“Against the Grain: The Strange Case of the Victorian Lady Who Wrote the first American Detective Novel” paper presented for Women Scholars at Canisius College, March 14, 1983
“Anna Katharine Green” lecture presented at Sibley’s Conference Hall: Buffalo State College Presents Three Remarkable Buffalo Women April 5, 1984
“A Lady Novelist Who Deals with Greed, Passion, and Murder” lecture at the College Club, March 27, 1985
“Before Sherlock Holmes there was Anna Katharine Green” article in MS Magazine, April 1985
Sicily and Naples, or The Fatal Union, A Critical Edition of a Jacobean Revenge Play
Volume 15 of “The Renaissance Imagination” series. New York and London: Garland Press, 1986.
Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (London) February 20, 1987. “New ground is certainly broken with Joan Warthling Roberts’s edition of Samuel Harding’s lively, derivative revenge tragedy, Sicily and Naples, printed at Oxford in 1640.”
“Emily Dickinson’s Universe” Joint lecture and film presentation with Professor David Landbey at E. H. Butler Library in the series “Literary Greats", spring 1987”
“A Penwoman Extraordinaire,” a paper presented for the League of American Penwomen, November 19, 1988
“Anna Katharine Green and Charles Rohlfs: Literary and Artistic Achievement,” Twentieth Century Club, January 18, 1989
“A Look at the 19th Century Buffalo, and a Famous Woman Writer,” Kenmore YWCa, October 25, 1989
“Correcting Memory, Restoring Hope: Open up the Canon in English Literature,” Northeastern College English Association Meeting, April 6, 1990
“Excuse me, Sir. I am an Intelligent Woman: Critical Response to The Leavenworth Case in 1878.” Midatlantic Conference of the Popular Culture Association, November 2, 1991
“Keeping Middle Class Women Virtuous: Women Fiction in the Late Nineteenth Century” paper presented at Buffalo State College: Literature Role in Defining American Culture, November 7, 1991
“A Havestraw Mystery Writer” published in South of the Mountains: A Quarterly Publication of the Historical Society of Rockland County. Vol. 26, No.1 January-March 1992
“Decorum, Decency, and Murder—All at 156 Park Street in Buffalo” lecture and slide presentation at the Jewish Community Center, February 26, 1992
“Two Spinster Sleths: Miss Amelia Butterworth, 1890s, and Jane Marple 1982” paper read at the National Convention of the Popular Culture Association, Louisville, Kentucky, March 21, 1992
“Reclaiming Our Past: Anna Katharine Green’s Forty-one Books and How they Grew” The English Speaking Union of the United States, Niagara Frontier Branch, May 4, 1992
“All Pity for Miss Emily Dickson’s Starved Life is Misdirected” paper delivered at the Twentieth Century Culture Club, November 4, 1992
“What was in the Air in the 1860’s?” paper given at the International Conference of the Popular Culture Association, April 10, 1993
Murder is Academic: A Collection of Crime Fiction Syllabi ed. B.J. Rahn, Hunter College: New York, 1993. Popular Narrative Fiction in the Late 19th Century, Joan Warthling Roberts
“Interview with Martha Sidway Adams”: Audiotape, on social and cultural life on “turn of the century” Buffalo, October 1993
“Writing Biography” a paper presented for the College Club, April 23, 1997
Invited Contributor to a Biocritical Dictionary: Great Women Mystery Writers: A Biocritical Dictionary, a reference work published by Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn and London, 1994
Exhibition at the Burchfield Center, “The Works of Charles Rohlfs and Anna Katharine Green.” Exhibit Catalog: “State University of New York College Press,” Co-curator with Michael James
“A Gathering of Poets: Poetry Anthology form English Creative Writing Class,” Buffalo State College, Spring 1994
“Take a Taste of Our Minds: Poetry Anthology from English 306,” Buffalo State College, May 1995
Two chapters commissioned for inclusion in a collection of essays from the University of Toronto Press: “Amelia Butterworth: The Spinster Detective,”
“From Spinster to Hipster: the Suitability of Miss Marple and Anna Lee,” Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction ed. Glenwood Irons. University of Toronto Press: Toronto Buffalo London, 1995
Lecture/discussion on writing biography with Williamsville H.S. Advanced Placement classes: “A Life Worth Living.” January 1997
Paper presented to American Association of University Women (AAUW) meeting, Buffalo Chapter. “The Case of the Well-Beloved Story, The Doctor, His Wife, and the Cook.” April 23, 1997
Paper presented at International Conference: “War in American Culture,” at Hacettepe University, Ankara Turkey. October 6-10, 1997. “Looking at War Through the Lens of Popular Culture: Courage and Honor in Spenser: For Hire.”
Paper presented at the Twentieth Century Club: “Fathers and Daughters; Voice and Influence in Women Writers.” February 5, 1998
Invited contributor to the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. Three articles contracted and written for this reference work: “Anna Katharine Green,” “The Gothic Novel,” “The Sensation Novel.” Oxford University Press, June 1998
Article commissioned for the Armchair Detective on “Amelia Butterworth, Lady Detective” June 1998
Article in The Western New York Heritage Review, Fall, 2004 “Tracing the Mother of the Detective Novel”
Work in Progress: Book-length biography. Why did she do it? A literary-critical biography of Anna Katharine Green, the Mother of the Detective Novel