Penn State is the historic home of American literature in higher education. In the early twentieth century, Fred Lewis Pattee became the first English professor in the country to teach classes centered on US literary works. With diverse interests and pathbreaking scholarship across this rich and multivalent field, the Americanist faculty at Penn State continue that ground-breaking tradition.
Some Recent Graduate Seminars
Studies in 19th Century American Literature
Cold War and Beyond: US Identity and the American Novel
Studies in 20th-Century American Lit: Expatriate American Modernists
Contemporary Fiction: Speculative Fiction
American Literature and the Problem of Justice
Contemporary Ethnic American Literatures: Reading Beyond Race
The Literature of Biography & Autobiography: American Modernist Memoir
Keywords for Studying Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Proseminar in C19 American)
Remapping the Time/Space of American Literature: Regionalism, Modernism, and Transnationalism
Novel Novels: 20th and 21st Century Narrative Experiments
Israel / Palestine / America
Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Modernist Little Magazines
The Contemporary American Political Novel
Early American Literacies
Hemispheric American Studies
Henry James and Others
19th Century Queer
American Literary Periodicals
Center for American Literary Studies
Founded in 2006, CALS advances the study, teaching, and reading of American literature, making Penn State an internationally recognized site of pioneering work in American literary and cultural studies. Through its dual scholarly and public outreach mission, CALS generates vital new forms of community and intellectual exchange, engaging readers, drawing them together, and positioning American literature as an important public space. CALS offers exceptional research and fellowship opportunities for Penn State faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Visit the CALS website at https://cals.la.psu.edu/.
Field-Defining Scholarship and Groundbreaking Conferences
Penn State Americanists have formed academic societies, created new models for interdisciplinary teaching, and hosted influential conferences. For example, Chris Castiglia, Sean Goudie, and Hester Blum formed C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists and hosted its inaugural conference at Penn State in 2010; and Professor Castiglia was the founding editor of the Society’s celebrated journal, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Sandra Spanier is the General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project and Michael Anesko serves as General Editor for The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James; emerita Carla Mulford was the founding president of the Society of Early Americanists and emeritus Bob Burkholder founded the innovative Penn State Wilderness Literature Field Institute. Gabrielle Foreman co-directs the Center for Black Digital Research and Sherita Johnston is the Director of the Africana Research Center. Shirley Moody Turner co-hosts an ongoing series of conferences entitled “Celebrating African American Literature.” These collaborative projects offer many opportunities for Penn State graduate students to contribute both professionally and intellectually.
Graduate Faculty, Before 1900
Graduate Students, Before 1900
The concept of history in literature, industrial society, print culture, Reconstruction literature, Romanticism, Naturalism, Realism, utopian novels, American Renaissance
American Literature Before 1900
queer American lit 1850-1900
Graduate Faculty, After 1900
New York University, Ph.D, Comparative Literature 2000
Trans-Atlantic literary modernisms; Black American literature, film and music; critical theory; experimental traditions in film.
Author of Ashes Taken for Fire: Aesthetic Modernism and the Critique of Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). He is working now on an interpretive study entitled Drift Velocities: the Aesthetic Curve of Radical Black Film and Literature.
Modern American Literature to WWII
- Post-1900 American literature and culture; Jewish American literature and culture; Arab American Literature; Ethnic literature; Intellectuals and culture; Literary history
Graduate Students, After 1900
queer American lit 1900-1950, 20th century Latinx lit (and its relationship to earlier American/British lit)
The Post-45 American novel