Devoney Looser

Devoney Kay Looser is an American literary and Jane Austen scholar. She is the Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University where she focuses on Jane Austen.

Looser was born and raised in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where her mother first introduced her to Jane Austen's work. Looser attended and graduated from Hill-Murray School in Maplewood, Minnesota in 1985.

As a first-generation college student, Looser received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Augsburg College in 1989 and later earned her doctorate in English with a certification in women's studies from Stony Brook University.

After brief stints at Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri, Looser accepted a faculty appointment at Arizona State University in 2000. A few years later, she published "British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820" which examined British women writers and their contributions to historiography. She followed this up with "Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850" in 2008.

In 2017, Looser published her third book titled "The Making of Jane Austen." This book focused on how Austen's influencers shaped her reputation as "a transnational figure used in support of women’s suffrage." She also uncovered an unpublished pen portrait of Austen meant for a 1823 issue of The Lady's Magazine. In 2018, Looser was appointed a Foundation Professor of English for her outstanding faculty accomplishments. In the same year, she was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to research the sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter.