Stockton Professor Discovers New Genre of Literature

Galloway Township resident and Richard Stockton College of New Jersey professor Kristin Jacobson is redefining what domestic fiction is all about.

More specifically, she’s defined a new subgenre, called neodomestic fiction, and she’s written a book all about it.

Neodomestic American Fiction examines a series of late 20th-, early 21st-century novels, and identifies a new trend in the era. Authors of that time period often wrote of unstable home life in contrast to the American ideal of a stable home life, and Jacobson provides examples of this throughout her book.

The book serves as a study of post-1980s American domestic fiction, which is defined as a literary genre historically associated with white, middle-class women. The plot and characters center on the home.

During her study, Jacobson arrived at certain conclusions that would modify how the genre fits into American literature.

According to Jacobson, she “traces and extends domestic fiction’s time period into the 21st century,” and “redefines the genre to include male as well as female authors and protagonists.” 

“Whereas, traditionally, only those novels written by and focused on women are labeled ‘domestic fiction,’ Neodomestic American Fiction revises this custom and identifies a new subgenre, neodomestic fiction, which has distinctive spatial characteristics,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson lists nearly 30 novels that are examples of domestic fiction that don’t fit in with the genre’s conservative agenda or racial and sexual politics.

“Unlike previous redefinitions and reevaluations, Neodomestic American Fiction reads domestic novels alongside feminist geography and architectural history to map the links and disjunctions among a range of authors writing during the same period as well as across centuries and cultures,” according to a statement from the book’s publisher, the Ohio State Press.

Jacobson graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Ph.D. in English in 2004. She also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Colorado-Boulder and Carthage College, respectively.

“The various places I have inhabited, especially during the time spent working on this book, have blessed me with the time, encouragement and knowledge to write,” said Jacobson, who hopes her book will advance the public’s understanding of domestic fiction, as well as American literature and culture.