Jess Libow is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Program at Haverford College, where she teaches courses on health and social justice in U.S. literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present. She earned her Ph.D. in English with a certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Emory University in 2021.

Her book, Vigorous Reforms: Women Writers and the Politics of Health in the Nineteenth-Century United States (forthcoming from UNC Press), traces how women writers leveraged their expertise in the domestic health science of physical education to intervene in debates about sex, race, and citizenship. Her scholarship has been published in the journals American Literature, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, College Composition and Communication, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 

Her research has been supported by grants from the American Antiquarian Society; the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan; the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine; and the Center for Mark Twain Studies.