Jessica C. Murphy, PhD is Associate Professor of Literature at The University of Texas at Dallas whose research focuses on the literature and culture of early modern England from 1500-1700, and whose commitment to teaching excellence earned her the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2013 and membership in the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2020. Murphy serves as the Dean of Undergraduate Education whose portfolio includes academic support services, holistic student success programs, mentor programs, pre-professional advising, student success data analysis, and responsibility for undergraduate policies. Murphy is a chief student success officer charged with representing student success internally as a shared responsibility, externally through work with the University of Texas System and national organizations, and seeking funding opportunities for initiatives that improve outcomes for undergraduate students at UT Dallas.
What made you decide to study the English Renaissance period of literature?
I certainly did not start with early modern literature in mind as a focus for my studies. At the beginning of my college career, I was interested in studying medicine. This seemed like a good way to achieve economic mobility and I loved science. But my intellectual path took me from biology and chemistry to genetics to philosophy to literature and theater. In early modern England, all of these disciplines are linked together through printed books, manuscripts, plays, songs, and other works of art. My current work uses medical texts, herbal manuals, home recipe books, literary texts, and popular literature to understand greensickness, a disease in early modern England that affects only virgin women.
Teaching early modern English literature is especially rewarding because it is such a politically and culturally interesting period of literature. I hope to convey that interest to my students both to increase their cultural capital and to offer them new ways to look at the past.
How does a gender studies lens impact your study of literature?
Representations of gender in early modern literature are very rich. My training in feminist literary theory, philosophy, and pedagogy brought me to gender studies as an interdisciplinary way of looking at gendered representations. The world that literature and history shows us is a world constructed by notions of power, identity, and morality. Take greensickness as an example. The disease is a collection of symptoms that if displayed by a woman of marriageable age was labeled as a dangerous disease. Because the best cure for the disease was marriage, a diagnosis like this fits well with the cultural and economic drive to marry off daughters. Virgin women are always potentially diseased in this representation. What does this mean about early modern English culture? Gender studies allows me to think through gender in the early modern period in England.
What was the transition like from teaching literature to becoming the Dean of Undergraduate Education at The University of Texas?
I was driven to serve as dean in part because of my love of teaching. They thought of me for the position because of a statewide teaching award I won. This is somewhat ironic since I teach less now that I am dean. However, the idea that I could be instrumental in creating opportunities for students to be successful in their undergraduate journey appealed to me. In the classroom, I work to increase access to social and economic mobility, but this realistically touches fewer than one hundred students a year. Our office of undergraduate education served over 10,000 unique students (half of our undergraduate population) through its many programs last academic year alone, we regularly employ over 250 student workers, and we work on policy that affects every undergraduate student at the institution.
This year, you started a Master of Legal Studies program at Texas A&M School of Law, what inspired that decision?
Higher education as a field has changed over time to require more legal knowledge than just one office of counsel can offer. Understanding the law and its processes is crucial to success in public higher education leadership. I am pursuing this master’s degree because I hope it will help me serve our students better. It has been great so far being a student again. It’s an online program, so I have to acknowledge that I may have taught online occasionally, but I have never taken a class online. I discovered that I prefer this method because it fits nicely with my hectic work and travel schedule.
Understanding the law and its processes is crucial to success in public higher education leadership. I am pursuing this master’s degree because I hope it will help me serve our students better.
I may be teaching and writing about Shakespeare now, but I never would have tackled the first Shakespeare play we worked on in depth in ILS without the help of a classmate from my drama class.
What are some of your favorite Riverdale classroom memories?
One of my favorite memories is not from inside the classroom, but to do with an interaction with a fellow student. I may be teaching and writing about Shakespeare now, but I never would have tackled the first Shakespeare play we worked on in depth in ILS without the help of a classmate from my drama class. I still use this example in my classes today. He helped me through Othello in multiple phone calls (it was the 90s after all). He was not condescending, though I imagine that his family had been reading Shakespeare’s plays to him since a very young age. Once I got the hang of it, we would talk about the text. This may have taken a total of two weeks, but it had a huge impact on the way I understand the importance of Shakespeare today. For a first-generation scholarship student like me, Shakespeare was a barrier between me and a rich intellectual life. For my classmate, Shakespeare was an interesting playwright. But in talking through the work with me, he helped me overcome a barrier to success. He gave me a little bit of cultural capital that I carried forward with me, even if he did not realize it at the time. And I like to think maybe I taught him a bit about how intelligence can come from anywhere with a little investment. I think of this when I teach students with different backgrounds and urge them to lift each other up.
What piece of advice would you give to current students?
My advice to current students would be to think of yourself as part of a larger community to which your contribution is very valuable. It can be lonely striving to get the right scores and take the right classes and seek the right internships if you do all of this without your community. Likewise, it is easy to get swept up in the work of being a high school student and ignore the duty of privilege. Remember that you are a human first. Think about doing things that matter in everything you do.
What are you currently reading, watching, or listening to?
We just read Shakespeare’s Othello alongside Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor in the class I am teaching. Cobb’s play is fabulous and a very astute reading of “Shakespearean” theater and of Othello. I am also reading Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Overboard by Sara Paretsky. I am listening to Ruth Ware’s Zero Days right now.