Jenifer Elmore's discovery of an overlooked writer as an FSU graduate student led the English alumna to a career in academics

When Jenifer Elmore was growing up, her family did not emphasize higher education opportunities: she was the first among them to seek an advanced degree.

Once she enrolled at Florida State University to pursue her master’s in English, though, she had already developed a multifaceted appreciation for academia.

“I was pretty sure by the time I was leaving Sewanee that I wanted to be an English professor,” says Elmore, referring to University of the South-Sewanee in Tennessee, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1988.

The path to realizing her objective was far from straightforward, however. She achieved her goal in 2005 when she became a professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida.

Elmore graduated summa cum laude from Sewanee, entered FSU’s graduate program in 1997, and finished at FSU in 2002 with her doctoral degree in English, concentrated in U.S. Literature to 1875, with a minor in British Women’s Literature 1750-1850, one she created for herself.

“I was working in the editing field or some kind of part-time journalism or freelance writing all through those years of my education gap, but I felt intellectually starved during those 10 years off,” she says. “I did teach high school for two years but after that I was completely out of academics for eight years. That time off showed me that I needed it, that I was just built to be in an academic environment with a high level of intellectual stimulation.”

Her success at Palm Beach includes serving as chair of the English department since 2008, winning the university’s Corts Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2013, and serving as co-coordinator of the general education program. PBAU English majors have been accepted to numerous graduate programs, including four who have earned advanced degrees in English at FSU. The department has produced three Fulbright Teaching Fellows, had two graduates accepted for advanced degree programs at Oxford University, and been recognized by the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society as having the Best Chapter in the Nation for three of the past six years.

In the spring of 2021, Elmore published her first book, a scholarly edition of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s 1824 novel Redwood: A Tale, an Edinburgh University Press publication. In addition to her scholarly editing for the project, Elmore provided the introduction as well.

The focus for her publication flows from Elmore master’s thesis and her dissertation topic. She learned about Sedgwick in the first semester of her FSU master’s program. Former English Associate Professor Dennis Moore, who retired from FSU in 2019, was offering a 6000-level graduate seminar in captivity narratives, but Elmore was unsure if she was ready for that much of a challenge.

She contacted Moore, who reassured her enough that she signed up.

“That was a great class,” Elmore says, adding that the syllabus listed one of Sedgwick’s novels. “What was so fascinating to me with Catherine Sedgwick was my awakening, when I realized that a noncanonical, relatively forgotten writer could really grab me, across the centuries. That was just stunning to me. It was a revelation, in a way, and then that process just continued on with this realization that forgotten writing could be really good.”

Born in Massachusetts, Sedgwick was a popular author who chronicled New England life with six major novels and a travel memoir during the span from 1822 to 1857, as well as more than a hundred other publications such as novellas, short stories, sketches, works for children, and other forms of fiction and non-fiction that do not easily fit into today’s genre categories. Throughout her adult life, Sedgwick addressed controversial social issues for the time and kept friendships with many female and male authors, including William Cullen Bryant, Herman Melville, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Beginning close tp the end of the 19th century, however, prejudice from men against women authors pushed Sedgwick and others into relative obscurity until feminist scholars in the mid-1980s began studying many of them, Sedgwick included.

“It was painful realizing that there is this capriciousness in the market and in higher education and in the world of publishing, that these forces can come together and just erase somebody,” Elmore says.

Elmore says she read everything Sedgwick published and many papers that were never published.

“I was really taken in with her fiction,” she says, “and I could see the differences with what she was trying to do compared to what the other familiar canonical writers in the same period were trying to do. I thought, this is such a fascinating story.”

Elmore’s master’s thesis is titled The Cultural Work of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Short Fiction. Moore’s advice at the beginning of her program had paid off, and he says that directing Elmore’s research—for both her thesis and her dissertation—was “an honor.”

A testament to the quality of Elmore’s scholarship, he adds, came from Professor Mary C. Kelley, who at the time was Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. Kelly authored Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America, which drew attention to women authors whom Nathaniel Hawthorne had called “a damned mob of scribbling women,” according to Moore.

“When Jen showed me how much she had come up with about Sedgwick and asked what she was leaving out, I told her that the one person who would know was historian Mary Kelley, who had published The Power of Her Sympathy: The Autobiography and Journal of Catherine Maria Sedgwick,” says Moore, who is a past president of the interdisciplinary Society of Early Americanists. “Jen found her e-mail address at Dartmouth, and Kelley e-mailed Jenifer to say that Jen clearly knew as much about Sedgwick as she did.”

Elmore also took advantage of having a professor on her doctoral dissertation committee from outside FSU, a path not used often. She needed an expert in early U.S. women writers, and she petitioned to have Professor Julia Stern of Northwestern University on her committee, which was approved.

When Elmore entered FSU’s English Literature doctoral program, she signed up for courses with then-English Professor Eric Walker, who specialized in 18th- and 19th-century British literature. One of authors she discovered was Maria Edgeworth, an Anglo-Irish writer of children’s and adult literature, who also wrote about topics that were controversial at the time.

She, like Sedgwick, had been relegated to relative obscurity by male prejudice. Edgeworth’s first published book was in 1795 and her final publication appeared in 1848, one year before her death. During a period of approximately 15 years, beginning in 1800, Edgeworth was considered to be the most celebrated and successful living English novelist.

The books of hers that Elmore read, combined with her previous study of Sedgwick’s works, began to put the time period in perspective for Elmore.

“Those books helped me develop the entire picture, the extent of the political aspect of Sedgwick’s and Edgeworth’s agendas,” she says. “They seemed to be writing novels about courtship and domesticity, and in a way, they are. But I started to figure out the pattern and see that not only was Edgeworth writing about certain ideas and Sedgwick was writing about certain ideas but Sedgwick also was recognizing that Edgeworth’s focus was for Ireland and the same could be done for the U.S. And so, she did it.”

These connections between the two authors led to Elmore’s doctoral dissertation, Sacred Unions: Catharine Sedgwick, Maria Edgeworth, and Domestic-Political Fiction, which she defended in 2002. Her scholarship earned Elmore the English department’s Russell Reaver Award for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature.

“From day one, ‘outstanding’ described her work as a graduate student,” Moore says. 

Sedgwick’s writings especially resonated with Elmore, leading to the publication of her edited edition of Redwood: A Tale. She enjoyed the process, saying “I love being an editor,” but she appreciated the balance of writing the introduction as well.

“The book was reprinted many times in the nineteenth century, but there were two major editions, in 1824 and then in 1850, when it was revised and reissued,” Elmore explains. “I was the first person to really dig in and look at the differences between those two editions and think about the ‘why.’ Why was she trying to do this for the 1824 audience and something else for the 1850 audience? Were they general improvements or were they strategic changes targeted toward a new audience, a new generation in 1850? That part of it was a lot of fun.”

Elmore had applied for Palm Beach Atlantic’s Summer Undergraduate Research grant, funding that would allow her to collaborate with an advanced undergraduate English major. Rachel Sakrisson was an honors student at Palm Beach Atlantic who graduated with her bachelor’s in English in 2019, and she became Elmore’s research assistant in the summer of 2018.

Sakrisson says her interest in Sedgwick arose while taking Literature in the American Renaissance with Elmore. Students in the class transcribed photocopied versions of Sedgwick’s short stories into digital texts and annotated any obscure references.

“Being both a student and co-collaborator with Dr. Elmore was a pleasure,” Sakrisson says. “As a student, I found her zest and passion for the English language contagious. Naturally interested in grammar and punctuation, I felt immediately comfortable in Dr. Elmore's classes as attention to detail was a major part of how students were encouraged to approach literature.”

There was no publisher for the 2021 edition at the time, but Elmore knew the research needed to happen.

“Rachel started with the footnotes, and she started reading this novel, which was a big challenge,” Elmore says. “I already know more about Catherine Sedgwick and about 1820s and 1830s American fiction than most people, and it's really hard even for me to go back to that time and know all of the details.”

Still, Elmore knew that Sakrisson could read the novel with fresh eyes and a new perspective, marking passages that were confusing, what she liked in general, and creating the footnotes, all tasks Elmore calls invaluable. Sakrisson herself embraced that approach.

“Modern vocabulary and grammar usage are different enough from that of the 19th century that I often had to second guess my first reading of the text,” she says. “Dr. Elmore is a Sedgwick scholar in every sense of the term, though, and I was often amazed by Dr. Elmore's wealth of knowledge—not only of Sedgwick, but also of the time period in which Sedgwick lived.”

Many times, when a reference stumped the two, Elmore knew where to find the information thanks to her contacts in the Sedgwick community. Sakrisson equates the discussions that summer and work she did on the book to two semesters or more of course curriculum.

My experience working with Dr. Elmore was my first introduction to how small and tight-knit some fields of literature are. Dr. Elmore’s incredible trust in me as a research assistant greatly encouraged me in my work on Redwood and into my current career. My work that summer was a valuable and formative part of my education at Palm Beach Atlantic.

— Rachel Sakrisson

“My experience working with Dr. Elmore was my first introduction to how small and tight-knit some fields of literature are,” says Sakrisson, who currently works in Washington, D.C. for a nonprofit organization. “Dr. Elmore’s incredible trust in me as a research assistant greatly encouraged me in my work on Redwood and into my current career. My work that summer was a valuable and formative part of my education at Palm Beach Atlantic.”

Elmore credited Sakrisson on the book’s cover as an editorial assistant. And the publication is dedicated to Moore.

“That's one of those full circle situations, where he introduced me to Catharine Sedgwick in my very first master’s class,” she says, “and all these years later, I have a chance to dedicate something to him.”

Elmore’s appreciation for Sedgwick has led her to serve several terms as an officer of the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society, and twice she has directed the triennial Sedgwick Symposium, including the June 2022 event held in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Sedgwick’s hometown.

Elmore’s success as an author and an educator might not have happened if not for a fortunate turn of events during her senior year at Sewanee, which is about 45 miles from her hometown of Shelbyville, Tennessee. Elmore applied for and earned a Watson Fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. The focus of the fellowship is travel-related, with a connection to a topic of interest.

Because Elmore already had designs on being an English professor, her application was geared toward secondary education experiences. With the fellowship, she traveled to Scandinavian countries, which were being studied at the time for their attention to higher education. She also visited the United Kingdom and other continental European countries, in addition to spending time in Japan, a model for education in the late 1980s.

The travel involved building relationships with educators and guest lecturing, as well as conducting interviews and examining what it was like to teach in different parts of the world, adventures that took her far from the small town of about 15,000 people where she grew up.

Her move to Tallahassee did not happen until a decade later, when her husband, a journalist in Palm Beach, where the couple had settled, had the opportunity to work in the Palm Beach Post’s Tallahassee bureau. Elmore was interested in FSU’s English graduate program before his promotion, and an impractical goal for her was now attainable.

“I was attracted to FSU and Tallahassee, and I liked the faculty in English, from what I could tell,” Elmore says. “Based on the research I could do at the time, I really liked what was going on in American Literature, and everything just felt right.”

In addition to future research opportunities, Elmore looked to return to an area that was more aligned with her Tennessee environment. Although she appreciated the richness of culture in South Florida, she experienced a bit of homesickness, and Tallahassee offered familiar qualities, such as hills and a climate with four seasons.

“I found my niche in graduate school at FSU, and I received great instruction and great mentorship from the English faculty,” Elmore says.

When Elmore entered FSU’s M.A. program in 1997, she and her husband had two young daughters, one in kindergarten and a two-year-old.

“At that time, no other students in my cohort had young children, so it was a little isolating for me socially, but the maturity and time management that I had learned from parenting greatly helped me manage the demands of graduate work,” she says. “I was a much more disciplined graduate student than I had been as an undergrad.”

Elmore and her husband returned to the Palm Beach area while she was finishing her dissertation, and she became an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Wilkes Honors College. She graduated from FSU in December 2002, and then took a full-time faculty position at Palm Beach Atlantic in 2005, with a promotion to full professor in 2017.

The couple’s son was born in 2004, while Elmore was an adjunct at the FAU Honors College. He graduated from high school in the spring of 2022 and begins college at Sewanee in the fall of 2022. Their youngest daughter graduated from the FSU College of Nursing in 2016 and is a practicing registered nurse. Their oldest daughter earned a doctorate in evolutionary biology from Harvard.

Elmore admits “it's hard for me to stay in my own lane,” and Elmore finds herself being involved in various academic directions with curriculum, policies, and general reform. She also is student-centered, taking time to guide them through internships and plans for graduate school or giving them advice on how to apply for nonteaching careers using their English skills.

And she still teaches, not as much as when she first started at Palm Beach Atlantic, but enough for Elmore to remain appreciative of the classroom environment.

“My favorite thing that happens in a classroom is when you have a plan that you try to apply some kind of reason to predict that having students read a particular text or give a certain presentation is going to result in one kind of productive intellectual experience,” she says. “But then, during the discussion in class, somebody makes one observation or one connection, and it goes off in a direction that you never would have predicted. And the ideas are so rich that some students use them in their term papers.”

The extended impact, she says, could be a change in her syllabus that creates a richer course, one that could become transformative and nurture intellectual growth for the students.

For Elmore, that moment of transformation took place the first time she opened a book by Catharine Sedgwick in an FSU English graduate seminar.