Brownstein is an emeritus professor of English at
Brooklyn College and the
CUNY Graduate Center.[1][3] She is known for her contributions to the field of
English literature and her work on the novel, particularly the 18th- and 19th-century British novel. Her research and writing have focused on various aspects of literature, including narrative theory, women writers, and the intersections of literature and culture. She is the author of four books, Becoming a Heroine: Reading about Women in Novels;[4][5][6]Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie-Française;[7]Why Jane Austen?;[8][9] and American Born: an Immigrant's Story, a Daughter's Memoir.[10][2] She was a MacDowell Foundation fellow (1980)[11] and spent a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy (1996). She was a fellow at the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University (2016-2017). In 1993, she received the George Freedley Award from the Theatre Library Association for Tragic Muse and it was listed as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.[12] She is considered a foundational feminist literary critic and a leading scholar of
Jane Austen's works.[13][14][15]
^Margolis, Anne T. (April 1984). "Becoming a Heroine: Reading about Women in Novels . Rachel M. Brownstein Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth . Nina Auerbach". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 9 (3): 493–496.
doi:
10.1086/494074.