Profile Detail
Vera Camden
Vera J. Camden is Professor of English at Kent State University, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and Clinical Professor of Social Work at Rutgers University. She is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. She is a member of the Committee on Research and Special Training at the American Psychoanalytic Association, Co-editor of American Imago, and on the editorial board of The American Psychoanalyst and Bunyan Studies: A Journal of Reformation and Dissent. She specializes in seventeenth-century British literature, psychoanalysis and literature, trauma studies, and children and young adult literature.
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Edited Books
- Trauma and Transformation: The Political Progress of John Bunyan. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Journal Editorships
- Co-Editor, American Imago, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000-present
- Associate Editor, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, The International Universities Press, 1999-2000
Special Issues Edited
- Identity, Agency and Gender in John Bunyan’s England. Spec. issue of Bunyan Studies 11 (2004). (Guest Editor, with Kimberly Hill)
- Early Women Analysts. Spec. issue of American Imago 60.2 (2003).
Book Chapters
- “The Touch of Evil and the Trimph of Love in Harry Potter” Critical Insights: Good and Evil, Ed., Margaret Breen, (Ipswich, Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2011).
- “The Goodwives of Bedford” in The Cambridge Companion to John Bunyan, Ed.,Anne Dunan Page (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2010).
- “Young Man Bunyan,” in Trauma and Transformation: The Political Progress of John Bunyan. ed.,Vera J. Camden (Stanford University Press, 2007).
- “The Past is a Foreign Country: The Uses of Literature in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue.” In Narrative Medicine and Psychoanalysis. Eds. Peter Rudnytsky and Rita Charon ( SUNY University Press, 2008).
- Writing. Ed. N. H. Keeble. Religion and Discourse Series, Vol.12. Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2002. 133-165.
Articles
- “The Unbearable Inner Light: John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Quakers,” Bunyan Studies (Number 14, 2010) 34-56.,
- “Psychoanalysis and the Academy: Practical Aspects and Philosophical Foundations” American Imago 67:4 Winter 2010, 601-605.
- “ ‘My Capital Secret’: Literature and the Psychoanalytic Agon” International Jnl of Psychoanalysis, special editor Sandor , Fall, 2009, 90:5.
- “The Language of Tenderness and Passions: Sex in Paradise” New Literary History, Fall, 2007
- “Attending to Sarah Wight: Little Writer of God’s Wonders.” Identity, Agency and Gender in Bunyan’s England. Bunyan Studies 11 (2004): 94-131.
Reviews (since 2004)
- Rev. With Culture in Mind, Psychoanalytic Stories Ed, Muriel Dimen in Division/Review: APsychoanalytic Forum, 2011.
- Rev. of A Story of Her Own: the Female Oedipus Complex, Reexamined and Renamed. Nancy Kulish and Deanna Holtzman , American Imago 68:1, Spring 2011, 139-149.
- Rev. of The Desire of the Analysts ed. Henry Sussman, (SUNY, 2007), Intertexts, Fall, 2009.
- Rev. of Adaptations by Phillip Freeman, American Imago, (Fall, 2008) 1123-1137.
- Rev of Graceful Reading, by Michael Davies. Bunyan Studies (Winter, 2007).
Works Forthcoming
- The Diary of Mary Franklin, ed. Vera Camden, under commission and contract, (University of Toronto Press’ “Other Voice Series” General Editor, Elizabeth Hageman).
- “John Bunyan and Psychoanalytic Criticism” The Oxford Handbook to John Bunyan Ed. Michael Davies, (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Invited lectures:
- “The Skin-Ego in the Sculpture of Ursula von Ryingsvard” invited lecture Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland, Ohio February 2012
- “John Bunyan in Prison” Seventh Triennial International John Bunyan Society Conference, Princeton University, August 2013.
Some Representative Recent Presentations:
- “Creativity and Conscience: Bunyan in Prison and Freud’s Imprisoned Dreamer” Emory University, and the Emory Psychoanalytic Studies Program, Atlanta, Georgia, “Creativity Across the Life Cycle” April 2011(plenary).
- “Theme and Variations in the Face of a Psychoanalytic Treatment” 16th Annual Leibert Lecture, Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute, April 2010
- “The Unbearable Inner Light: Bunyan and the Quakers” Keele University, England, Sixth International John Bunyan Society Conference, August 2010.
- “Opportunities for Psychoanalysis: Philadelphia and Beyond” MLA, Philadelphia, December, 2009
- “Panel with Christopher Bollas: The Freudian Moment” MLA, San Francisco, December 2008
- The Case of John Bunyan” Richardson Seminar, The Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Cornell University, March 21, 2007
- "Trauma and Toleration, " Fifth International John Bunyan Society Triennial Conference on "Early Modern Religion and Literature in Old and New England," Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire,15-19 August 2007
Research Areas
- Early Modern British
- Puritan British
- Psychoanalysis
- Early Modern Women
OFFICE
Department of EnglishCONTACT INFO
Phone: 330-672-1732vcamden@kent.edu
COURSES TEACHING
Summer 2013- ENG 89299 - 031 Dissertation Ii
- ENG 21002 - 001 Intro To Women ' S Lit
- ENG 38001 - 002 Critical Theory And Reading
- ENG 39395 - 001 Special Topics In Fiction
- HONR 40099 - 005 Senior Honors Thesis / Project
- ENG 89299 - 002 Dissertation Ii