Contact: hmanshel@hawaii.edu
Hannah Manshel is assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her book manuscript, “Spirits Before the Law: Faith, Race, and Freedom Beyond Property,” pairs early American and nineteenth-century American texts with contemporary media to trace the enduring legacy of how people have turned to faith, broadly defined, to undermine a US legal system founded upon slavery and settler colonialism. Her work has been published in American Literature, Early American Literature, American Literary History, Criticism, and Women & Performance.
She teaches classes in American literature before 1900, with a focus on race and colonialism, as well as classes in queer theory and popular culture. In 2025, she was awarded the Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching at UH Mānoa.
Publications
Peer Reviewed
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In Perfect Bad Faith: Race and Attacks on the Indian Child Welfare Act.” American Quarterly 77.4 (December 2025): 613–636.
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“Feeling Politics: Weaving Solidarity from Hawaiʻi to Palestine.” American Quarterly 77.2 (June 2025): 389–392.
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“Bad Faith and the American Indian: Laura Cornelius Kellogg and the Problem of Democratic Inclusion,” American Literary History 35.1, special issue on Democracy and the Novel in the US (Spring 2023), 113-125.
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“Never Allowed for Property: Harriet Jacobs and Layli Long Soldier Before the Law,” American Literature 94:2 (June 2022), 331-355.
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“William Apess and the Nullification of Settler Law,” Early American Literature 55.3 (Fall 2020), 753-779.
- “The Desire for Fact: Anti-Racist Ethics in Discourses of Sexual Violence,” Criticism 60.4 (Fall 2018), 511-531.
- “Breathing Material: Cassils and Xandra Ibarra in Los Angeles,” Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 27:1, 137-141.
Public Facing
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“Invitation to a Die-In.” Lit Hub, February 10, 2025.
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“Queer Girls in The Wilds: Refusing White Feminism’s Settler Colonial Fantasy.” With M. A. Miller. Los Angeles Review of Books, May 22, 2021.
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with Keahi Coria, UHM undergraduate English major, Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies, February 2021
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"Settler Fantasies: Televised," Public Books, August 2020
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Contributor to "Reflections on the Crisis at Hand" Roundtable, Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies, Summer 2020
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"Let's take a moment to appreciate Natalie Diaz's Twitter Cocktails...", Lit Hub, August 2020
Areas of Interest
- American literature pre-1900
- Law
- Black studies & literatures
- Indigenous studies & literatures
- Queer studies
- Decolonization & Abolition
Awards
Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2025
Education
PhD, English UC Riverside 2020
Courses
Spring Semester 2026
- ENG-336: American Literature to Mid-19th C
- ENG-481: Studies: Literature & Popular Culture
Fall Semester 2026
- ENG-337: American Literature Mid-19th to Mid-20th Centry
- ENG-433: Studies in 19th Century Literature
Spring Semester 2025
- ENG-336: American Literature to Mid-19th Century
- ENG-775: Seminar in Cultural Studies: Queer Theory
Fall Semester 2024
- ENG-320: Intro to English Studies
- ENG-433: Studies: 19th Century Literature
Fall Semester 2025
- ENG-337: American Literature Mid-19th to Mid-20th Century
- ENG-620: Introduction to Graduate Study in English