Nancy A. Walker is a professor of English and former director of the women's studies program at Vanderbilt University. Previously she has taught at Stephens College, where she served as chair of the department of languages and literature from 1984 to 1989. A specialist in American women writers, she has published A Very Serious Thing: Women's Humor and American Culture (1988); Feminist Alternatives: Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary Novel by Women (1990); and The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition (1995). She is editor of Redressing the Balance: American Women's Humor from the Colonies to the 1980s (1988); Communication: The Autobiography of Rachel Maddux (1991); and Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism (Bedford Books, 1993).