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Inger Brodey headshot

Professor, Associate Dean for Curriculum and Faculty Development
English and Comparative Literature

brodey@email.unc.edu

Inger S.B. Brodey is a professor of English and comparative literature, adjunct professor of civic life and leadership, affiliate faculty in both Asian Studies and Global Studies and Associate Dean of curriculum and faculty development in the School of Civic Life and Leadership. She is an expert in the history of the novel and internationally known as a Jane Austen scholar, as well as a scholar of 18th- and 19th-century intellectual history.

A former Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, she has an M.A. in comparative literature and a Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought, both from the University of Chicago, and has studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and Albert-Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany. Her book Ruined by Design: Shaping Novels and Gardens in the Culture of Sensibility won the SAMLA Best Book Award; her book Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness (Johns Hopkins, 2024), has been reviewed in Publisher’s WeeklyThe New Yorkerthe Sunday Times, and The National Review, among others places. Professor Brodey teaches interdisciplinary courses on literature, philosophy, and film that address perennial human questions.