Rate My Professor Heather Houser

Heather Houser is a full professor in the Department of Literature, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, at the University of Antwerp. She teaches courses including Contemporary American Environmental Literature, Twentieth-century Literature in English 2, Twentyfirst-century Literature in English, The Outsider in Global Anglophone Literature, American Fiction Now: The Newest of the New, and Creative Non-Fiction: Theories, Genres, Methods. Her research examines contemporary cultural responses to environmental challenges such as climate change, particularly how the climate crisis influences reproductive decision-making in literature, film, and art. Additional interests encompass cultural representations of science and technology, reproductive justice, environmental justice, critical studies of data and information, and creative nonfiction writing. She integrates humanities perspectives into municipal climate planning and environmental advocacy. As promoter of the doctoral project Narrating Parental Regret in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction (2026-2030), she explores narrative techniques like counterfactual temporalities, focalization, and metaphor in anglophone fiction since 1990, theorizing parental regret as an affective, ethical, and political emotion tied to gender, race, class, sexuality, and life stage. This work advances affect theory, health humanities, and insights into parenting amid uncertainty. She is a member of the Antwerp Centre for Digital Humanities and Literary Criticism.