The Defoe Society

About Us

The Defoe Society, an international body, was formed in 2006 in order to achieve the following:

  1. To facilitate discussions and exchanges between Defoe scholars;
  2. To encourage Defoe scholarship through the organization of academic panels, the eventual establishment of regular meetings, and the creation of an informal newsletter;
  3. To build a website, on which will be posted an ongoing database of new Defoe publications;
  4. To establish a relationship with libraries with significant Defoe collections, and to seek to access, and to post on our site, select primary documents shared by those libraries;
  5. To discuss pedagogy in relation to Defoe’s corpus; and
  6. To encourage increased public awareness of Defoe and his work.

Executive Board

President: John Richetti (University of Pennsylvania)
Vice President: Katherine Ellison (Illinois State University)
Former President: Max Novak (University of California, Los Angeles)
Director: Manushag Powell (Purdue University)
Project Coordinator : Kit Kincade (Indiana State University)
Secretary: Rivka Swenson (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Treasurer: Leah Orr (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
Liaison Officer: Denys Van Renen (University of Nebraska, Kearney) 
Journal Editor: Adam Sills (Hofstra University)
Journal Editor:Christopher Loar (Western Washington University)
At-Large Member: Stephen H. Gregg (Bath Spa University, UK)
At-Large Member: Nicholas Seager (Keele University, UK)
At-Large Member: Jason Pearl (Florida International University)
At-Large Member: Emmanuelle Peraldo (Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis)
At-Large Member: Laura Stevens (University of Tulsa)
Graduate Student Representative: Alice Monter (University of Liverpool)