Professor of English (deceased)
Website: Jan Goggans
The late Professor Goggans was founding faculty at UC Merced. After arriving in 2005, she received tenure in 2011. Her teaching in that time has been diverse, but she often focuses on American literature. Her service has been equally diverse, and on both system-wide and campus committees, she has sought to improve the learning and lives of faculty and students, both graduate and undergraduate. After University of California Press published her well-received book on the Great Depression in California (California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal, 2010), which is focused on photographer Dorothea Lange and social scientist Paul Taylor, Professor Goggans turned her attention to the politics of fashion. Her most recent publications focus on fashion and literature in the Great Depression. Her newest book, with Palgrave, is Make It Work: 20th-Century American Fiction and Fashion.
Dr. Goggans passed away in February 2022. You can read a few tributes to her life and work here.
Professor Goggans taught classes on fashion and fiction, the literature of California, and working-class literature.
Updated 2021
