Curriculum Vita
For a complete record of professional activity,
please contact me for an updated CV (PDF Version).
EDUCATION
Ph.D. English (Early American Literature), University of Delaware, December 1983
Dissertation: "Joel Barlow's Letters, 1775-1788" Director, J. A. Leo Lemay
M.A. English, University of Delaware, June 1979
B.S. English and Education, summa cum laude, University of Delaware, June 1977
TEACHING APPOINTMENTS
Penn State University: Assoc. Prof., 1992--; Asst. Prof., 1986-92
Villanova University: Assistant Professor, 1984-86
Temple University: Visiting Full-Time Instructor, 1982-84
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin. Editor. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2008. A collection of original essays on some of the most important aspects of Franklin's intellectual career, designed for undergraduate and graduate students and interested general readers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Early American Writings. General Editor. Associate Editors Angela Vietto and Amy E. Winans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Anthology of readings.
Finding Colonial Americas: Essays Honoring J.A. Leo Lemay. Edited with David Shields. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Edited collection of essays.
Teaching the Literatures of Early America, MLA Options in Teaching Series. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1999. Edited collection.
American Women Prose Writers to 1820, vol. 200, Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Edited with Angela Vietto and Amy E. Winans. Detroit, Washington, DC, and London: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1998. Edited reference book.
William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797). Penguin Classics series. New York and London: Viking-Penguin, 1996. Critical, scholarly edition and textbook of two well-known early American novels.
Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Scholarly study and edition setting Stockton canon and reconfiguring scholarly evaluation of manuscript culture and "publication" for women.
John Leacock's The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times, 1774-1775. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987. Critical, scholarly edition of American revolutionary propaganda series, published anonymously by a relative of Benjamin Franklin.
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 2 vols., Paul Lauter, et al., eds. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., 1990. Third Edition, December, 1997, published by Houghton Mifflin. Edited pre-nineteenth-century materials for editions 1-3.
Essays in Journals and Chapters in Books
"Benjamin Franklin's Savage Eloquence: Hoaxes from the Press at Passy, 1782." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. [forthcoming; 65 typescript pages]
"Benjamin Franklin, Traditions of Liberalism, and Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia." In Educating the Youth of Pennsylvania: Worlds of Learning in the Age of Franklin, ed. John Pollack. University of Pennsylvania Libraries and Oak Knoll Press [forthcoming; 34 typescript pages
"Introduction." In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. Carla Mulford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pages 1-10.
"Benjamin Franklin and the American Dream," with Nian-Sheng Huang. In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. Carla Mulford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pages 145-58.
"Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Germans, and the Ethnic Origins of Nations." In Halle Pietism, Colonial North America, and the Young United States. USA Studien 15. Ed. Hans-Jurgen Grabbe. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008. Pages 147-60.
"Print and Manuscript Cultures in British North America." In The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature, ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Oxford University Press, 2008. Pages 321-43.
"Writing Women in Early American Studies: On Canons, Feminist Critique, and Writing Women into History." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 26 (Spring 2007) 107-18.
"Pox and 'Hell-Fire': Boston's Smallpox Controversy, the New Science, and Early Modern Liberalism." In Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-Century America. Ed. Mark L. Kamrath and Sharon M. Harris. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. Pages 7-27.
"George Washington, the South, and the Poetics of National Memory." In George Washington's South. Ed. Tamara Harvey and Greg O'Brien. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. Pages 316-65.
"Of Nature and of Nations: Anglicization, Creolization, and Finding an American Identity in Eighteenth-Century British America." In Do the Americas Have a Common Literary History? Ed. Barbara Buchenau and Annette Paatz. Frankfurt-am-Main and New York: Lang, 2002. Pages 61-94.
"Benjamin Franklin, Native Americans, and the Commerce of Civility." In Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism, 1775-1815. Ed. W. M. Verhoeven. Houndsmills, England, and New York: Palgrave Press, of St. Martin's Press, 2002. Pages 48-61.
"Imagining Benjamin Franklin," Afterword in Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings. Ed. L. Jesse Lemisch. Signet Classics edition. New York: New American Library, 2001. Pages 344-52.
"New Science and the Question of Identity in Eighteenth-Century British America." In Finding Colonial Americas: Essays Honoring J.A. Leo Lemay. Ed. Carla Mulford and David Shields. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Pages 79-103.
"The Ineluctability of the Peoples' Stories," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 57 (July 2000), 621-34.
"Uber Natur und Nationen: Anglisierung, Kreolisierung und das Finden einer amerikanischen Identitat im Anglo-Amerika des 18. Jahrhunderts." Trans. Armin Paul Frank. In Muster und Funktionen kultureller Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung: Beitrage zur internationalen Geschichte der sprachlichen und literarischen Emanzipation. Ed. Fritz Paul and Ulrike-Christine Sander. Gottingen, Germany: Wallstein Verlag, 2000. Pages 467-78.
"Franklin, Women, and American Cultural Myths." In Benjamin Franklin and Women. Ed. Larry E. Tise. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Pages 104-28, 161-66.
"Benjamin Franklin, Native Americans, and European Cultures of Civility." Prospects 24 (1999), 49-66.
"Resisting Colonialism." In Teaching the Literatures of Early America. Ed. Carla Mulford. New York: Modern Language Association, 1999. Pages 75-94.
"Introduction." In Teaching the Literatures of Early America. Ed. Carla Mulford. New York: Modern Language Association, 1999. Pages 1-6.
"Figuring Benjamin Franklin in American Cultural Memory," New England Quarterly 71 (1999), 415-43.
"Franklin, Modernity, and Themes of Dissent in the Early Modern Era," Modern Language Studies 28.2 (1998), 13-27.
"Benjamin Franklin and the Myths of Nationhood." In Making America / Making American Literature: Franklin to Cooper. Ed. A. Robert Lee and W. M. Verhoeven. Amsterdam and Athens, Ga.: Rodopi, 1996. Pages 15-58.
"Huehuetlatolli, Early American Studies, and the Problem of History," with "New Directions in Early American Studies," Early American Literature 30 (1995), 145-51.
"Joel Barlow and Masonic Conspiracy." In Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret Societies. Ed. Marie Mulvey Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. New York: AMS Press, 1995. Pages 169-87.
Forum in Teaching Early American Writings, Introduction: "The Uses of the Spanish Imperial Past in the Early 'American' Classroom," Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter, No. 12 (Fall, 1994), 1-2. Available on www: http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/essays/forum_intro.html
"Recovering the Colonial, Beginning Again: On Teaching American Writings to 1800," Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter, No. 11 (Spring, 1994), 2-8. Available on www: http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/essays/colonial.html
"Political Poetics: Annis Boudinot Stockton and Middle Atlantic Women's Culture," New Jersey History 111 (Spring/Summer 1993), 66-110. Awarded 1995 Richard P. McCormick Prize in History by the New Jersey Historical Commission for best essay published on New Jersey history in the years 1993-94.
"What Is the Early American Canon, and Who Said It Needed Expanding?" Resources for American Literary Study 19 (1993), 165-73.
"Seated amid the Rainbow: On Teaching American Writings to 1800," American Literature 65 (1993), 342-48.
"Caritas and Capital: Franklin's Narrative of the Late Massacres." In Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective. Ed. J. A. Leo Lemay. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993. Pages 347-58.
"Annis Boudinot Stockton and Benjamin Young Prime: A Poetical Correspondence, and More," Princeton University Library Chronicle 52 (1991), 231-66.
"Re-presenting Early American Drama," Resources for American Literary Study 17 (1990), 1-24.
"Loyal Verses, Tory Curses of the American Revolution," New Jersey History 106 (Spring / Summer 1988), 87-99.
"Radicalism in Joel Barlow's The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)." In Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge. Ed. J. A. Leo Lemay. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987. Pages 137-57.
"Booth's Progress and the Resolution of Amelia," Studies in the Novel 16 (Spring 1984), 20-31.
"Fitzgerald, Perkins, and The Great Gatsby," Journal of Narrative Technique 12 (Fall 1982), 210-20.
"An American Tragedy; Or, the Tragedy of the Adamic Myth," American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 14 (Spring 1981), 9-15.
"Fitzgerald's Revision of The Great Gatsby: The Creation of a Textual Anomaly," American Notes and Queries 19 (October 1980), 21-24.
"John Leacock's A New Song, On the Repeal of the Stamp-Act," Early American Literature 15 (1980), 188-93.
Articles in Reference Books
American National Biography. Gen. Ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. "Joel Barlow," 2: 166-68. "John Leacock," 13: 323-24. "Annis Boudinot Stockton," 20: 806-08.
The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. Ed. Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. "Early National Writing, 1776-1820," 264-67. "Annis Boudinot Stockton," 852-53.
Dictionary of Literary Biography: Volume 37, American Writers of the Early Republic. Ed. Emory Elliott. Detroit: Gale Research, 1985. "Richard Alsop," 9-12. "Mason Fitch Cogswell," 98-99.
Dictionary of Literary Biography: Volume 31, American Colonial Writers, 1735-1781. Ed. Emory Elliott. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. "John Leacock," 149-51.
Media Interviews
Oregon Public Broadcasting's American Passages series, designed for classroom use. Commentator on video, "The Spirit of Nationalism." Available January 2003 for purchase and available at http://www.learner.org/amerpass/.
Book Reviews
Joseph Nicolar, The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, ed. Annette Kolodny, in American Indian Culture and Research Journal [forthcoming; 5 typescript pages]
Paul C. Pasles, Benjamin Franklin’s Numbers: An Unsung Mathematical Odyssey, in Metascience [forthcoming; 6 typescript pages]
Eric Stockdale, 'Tis Treason, My Good Man!: Four Revolutionary Presidents and a Piccadilly Bookshop, in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 101 (2007) 255-57.
Lester C. Olson, Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology, in The American Historical Review 111 (2006), 157-58.
Etsuko Taketani, U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861, in Journal of the Early Republic 25 (2005), 516-18.
Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders, in Early American Literature 39 (2004), 393-99.
Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution, in The New England Quarterly 75 (2002), 157-60.
Nian-Sheng Huang, Franklin's Father Josiah: Life of a Colonial Boston Tallow Chandler, 1657-1745, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 125 (2001), 405-08.
David Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters, in American Literature 70 (1998), 397-98.
Francis Jennings, Benjamin Franklin, Politician: The Mask and the Man, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 121 (1997), 371-74.
Robert Middlekauff, Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies, in Pennsylvania History 64 (1997), 103-05.
Sacvan Bercovitch, gen. ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I: 1590-1820, in American Literature 68 (1996), 227-28.
Susan E. Klepp and Billy G. Smith, eds., The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 117 (1993), 339-41.
William C. Dowling, Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut, in Early American Literature 27 (1992), 226-29.
Larry J. Reynolds, European Revolutions and the American Literary Renaissance, in American Literature 63 (1991), 231-32.
J.A. Leo Lemay, ed., Robert Bolling Woos Anne Miller: Love and Courtship in Colonial Virginia, 1760, in Early American Literature 26 (1991), 207-11.
Kenneth A. Lockridge, The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674-1744, in Seventeenth-Century News 38 (Spring / Summer 1990), 19-20.
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings, in The Southern Quarterly 27, iv (Summer 1989), 120-22.
Albert Furtwangler, American Silhouettes: Rhetorical Identities of the Founders, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 113 (1989), 470-72.
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112 (1988), 462-63.
Robert A. Ferguson, Law and Letters in American Culture, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112 (April 1988), 289-91.
Darwin Payne, Owen Wister: Chronicler of the West, Gentleman of the East, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 111 (1987), 261-64.
Helen Hartman Gemmill, E.L., The Bread Box Papers: A Biography of Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109 (January 1985), 93-95.
Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757, in Resources for American Literary Study 14 (1984), 169-72.
David S. Reynolds, George Lippard, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107 (July 1983), 473-75.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire. A revisionist, synthetic, and cross disciplinary study of Franklin's writings on trade, populations, empire, and race, situating these writings on society, economies, and politics in the context of his interest in what we today refer to as early modern liberalism. Work on the volume has been supported by grants (for research and/or released time) from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Projected manuscript length, 500-550 pp.
RELEVANT SCHOLARLY HONORS
DLB Editor's Award for best-edited DLB volume of 1998, American Women Prose Writers to 1820.
Richard J. McCormick Prize in History, 1995: Received from the New Jersey Historical Commission, for essay published in New Jersey History, "Political Poetics: Annis Boudinot Stockton and Middle Atlantic Women's Culture."
Cincinnati History Prize, 1991: Received from the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey for "distinguished achievement in advancing the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history," in recognition of achievement in public history and scholarship for Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton.
RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS
American Council of Learned Societies: Release time fellowship award toward completion of book manuscript, Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire, 2006-2007
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia: Archival research fellowship award, Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire, winter 2000-2001
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, American Philosophical Society: Archival research fellowship award, Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire, winter 2000-2001
Research and Graduate Studies Office, College of Liberal Arts, Penn State: Release time award (one course release) for study of Benjamin Franklin and imperial Europe, fall 1998
NEH Summer Stipend: Archival research award for work on Benjamin Franklin and Native Americans, summer 1992 (essays published, 1995, 1996, 1999)
Melvin and Rosalind Jacobs Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State: Release time and archival research fellowship award for work on Benjamin Franklin and Native Americans, summer 1992 (essays published, 1995, 1996, 1999)
Roy C. Buck Fund Award, College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State: Travel award to conduct research at Newberry Library for work on Benjamin Franklin and Native Americans, summer 1992 (essays published, 1995, 1996, 1999)
American Council of Learned Societies: Release time fellowship award for transcriptions and archival research toward multi-volume edition of Joel Barlow's letters, 1987
New Jersey Historical Commission: For research for Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton, 1986 (book published, 1995)
New Jersey Committee for the Humanities: For research on Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton, 1986 (book published, 1995)
Villanova University Faculty Summer Research Grant: For research and writing of "Radicalism in Joel Barlow's Conspiracy of Kings (1792)," 1985 (essay published 1987)
University of Delaware Graduate Fellowships: Academic fellowships covering two academic years of graduate coursework, 1980-82
TEACHING AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Teaching Award, 2005: Received in recognition of teaching innovation and excellence
Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning, Penn State: Release time for preparation and implementation of experimental research seminar, an English Department Senior Seminar team-taught with graduate student and undergraduate intern, titled "Colonial Encounters, Columbian Consequences," spring 1998, spring 1999
SELECTED SCHOLARLY, PROFESSIONAL, AND CONSULTING ACTIVITIES
Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium, Benjamin Franklin 300: Consultant on programming developed to mark the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. Consortium includes the American Philosophical Society, The Franklin Institute, The Library Company of Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the University of Pennsylvania
American Antiquarian Society: Program organizer and invited speaker, History of the Book Program, Conference on "Histories of Print, Manuscript, and Performance in America," June 10-12, 2005
John Carter Brown Library, Brown University: Panelist, Committee for Mellon Foundation Grants, 2002, 2004
McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania: Panelist, Committee for Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Grants and Barra Foundation Grants, 2001-02, 2004-05
WITF Television and Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission: Content Review Panelist for interactive website developed by WITF public television, Harrisburg, Pa. and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Website currently available at http://www.explorepahistory.com/ExplorePAHistory/home.do
Center for Advanced Study, Georg-August University at Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany: International Advisory Committee for Inter-American Literary Studies Publications Series, published by Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2000-2002.
Center for Advanced Study, Georg-August University at Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany: Research Associate and Symposia Participant, 1998-1999
National Endowment for the Humanities: Grants Reviewer for Division of Research Programs: Collaborative Research Program, Fall, 2000; Research and Editions Program, Fall, 1995; Travel to Collections Program, Spring, 1985
KTCA, Twin Cities Public Television (Minnesota Public Television): Film series consultant, October 2000 for Benjamin Franklin, a biography in three parts
Society of Early Americanists: Founding President, 1990-96: initiated, developed, and implemented the founding of this interdisciplinary Society premised upon goals of scholarly exchange within and across institutions; formulated organizational structure and all founding documents
Modern Language Association: Executive Committee, Division of American Literature to 1800, 1990-1995; Division of American Literature to 1800 Executive Committee Chair, 1995
Society for the Study of American Women Writers: Advisory Board, 2002-2005.
Pennsylvania Historical Association: Executive Council, 1997-2001; 2001-2004
Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, Pennsylvania State University: Advisory Board, 1998--
Tenure and Promotion Evaluation: Brown University; Calvin College; Eastern Carolina University; Florida State University; Fordham University; George Mason University; Hofstra University; Illinois State University; Kalamazoo College; Kansas State University; Louisiana State University; Michigan State University; Northwestern University; Old Dominion University; Saint Joseph‟s College of Hartford; Santa Clara University; SUNY-Binghamton; University of Kentucky; University of Nebraska; University of Oregon; University of South Carolina; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Wyoming; West Virginia University
Book Manuscript Evaluation: American Philosophical Society; Colonial Society of Massachusetts; Duke University Press; Ohio University Press; Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (books published by the University of North Carolina Press); Oxford University Press; Southern Illinois University Press; University of Arizona Press; University of Georgia Press; University of Illinois Press; University of New Mexico Press; University of Tennessee Press; Pennsylvania State University Press; Yale University Press
Journal Editorial Boards: American Literature (Editorial Board, 1993-96); Early American Literature (Editorial Board, 1996-2000); Early American Studies (Editorial Board, 2002 - ); Eighteenth-Century Studies (Advisory Board, 1996-2001); Legacy (Editorial Board, 1991-94; 2001-2005; 2006-2009); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Editorial Board, 1993-2004); Post-Identity (Editorial Board, 1997-2002)
Journal Editor Positions: Co-Editor, Resources for American Literary Study, 1986-92; Associate Editor, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1986-91
Journal Manuscript Evaluation (in addition to editorial board posts): Eighteenth-Century Studies; ESQ: Emerson Society Quarterly; Feminist Theory; PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America; Pennsylvania English; Rhetoric Society Quarterly; Signs; Southern Quarterly; Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture; Texas Studies in Literature and Language; William and Mary Quarterly
INVITED LECTURES AND PAPERS SINCE 2005
"Benjamin Franklin and Educational Liberalism:" Invited Lecture, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, March 2008
"Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire": Invited Paper, International Symposium on Benjamin Franklin. Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, March 2, 2007
"Writing Early American Women into History": Plenary Lecture, South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference. Tulsa, OK, February 2007
"Benjamin Franklin and Educational Liberalism in the Plan for the Academy at Philadelphia": Invited Lecture, 17th Annual Cliveden Institute, "The Mansions of His Mind: Building Benjamin Franklin." Cliveden, of the National Historical Trust, Germantown, PA, March 2006
"Benjamin Franklin, Traditions of Liberalism, and the Plan for the Academy at Philadelphia": Lecture, opening session of "The Life and Legacy of Benjamin Franklin" at California State University Channel Islands Symposium. California State University, Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA, February 2006
"Benjamin Franklin and the Question of National Character": Invited Lecture for Franklin Symposium, "Benjamin Franklin's World." Belmont University, Nashville, TN, October 2005
"Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire": Informal Presentation for the summer series of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA, July 2005
"Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Discovering a Life": Lecture and webcam broadcast. Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, May 2005
"Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire": Invited Lecture, Joseph A. Schick Lectures, a three-day lecture symposium, "Celebrating Benjamin Franklin." Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, March 2005
"Pox and Hell-Fire: Boston's Smallpox Controversy, the New Science, and Early Modern Liberalism": Seminar Paper, Columbia Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture, Columbia University, NYC, May 2003
"Benjamin Franklin, Press Freedom, and Early Modern Liberalism": Paper for roundtable, "The Many Franklins," with Myra Jehlen (English, Rutgers), Joseph Chaves (Comparative Lit., Rutgers), Peter Silver (History, Princeton), Michael Zuckerman (History, Penn), Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, April 2002
"George Washington, the South, and the Poetics of National Memory": Invited Paper, George Washington and the American South, a conference sponsored by University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, October, 1999
"Of Nature and of Nations: Anglicization, Creolization, and Finding an 'American' Identity in Eighteenth-Century English America": Invited Paper, Conference on "International Nationalisms," Georg-August University at Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany, November, 1998
"On Community in Pennsylvania's Diversity": Invited Presentation, Statewide Discussion session, for "Restating Pennsylvania: Discussions on Our History, Culture, and Identity," program sponsored by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, at Centre County Historical Society, State College, PA, September 27, 1998
"Benjamin Franklin, Native Americans, and European Cultures of Civility": Keynote Address, International Symposium, "Revolutions and Watersheds: Transatlantic Dialogues, 1775-1815," University of Groningen, The Netherlands, May 1997
"Franklin, Modernity, and Themes of Dissent in the Early Modern Era": Invited Paper, Symposium presentation on Franklin, paired with David Reynolds on Walt Whitman, for symposium on "Franklin and Whitman: Two American Dissenters." Philadelphia and Camden, following conference of Northeast Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, April 6, 1997
"Benjamin Franklin and Women: American Cultural Renderings": Invited Paper, as Visiting Scholar for the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, November 1996
"Annis Boudinot Stockton, Woman of Letters": Invited Lecture, Foran Institute Sunday Lecture, for the New Jersey Cultural History and State Museum, Princeton, NJ, April 14, 1996
"Benjamin Franklin and the Enchantment of Empire": Plenary Lecture, Southeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Tallahassee, FL, March 1996
"Franklin, Women, and American Cultural Myths": Invited Paper, "Franklin and Women," a day-long symposium of The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA, Apr. 9, 1994
“Benjamin Franklin among the Iroquois”: Invited Lecture, Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York; Oct. 5, 1993
CONFERENCE PAPERS PRESENTED
"Franklin's Mercantilist Critique": Paper, Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, December 2007
"Print Media and the Silencing of Early American Women": Paper, Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, December 2007
"Benjamin Franklin and Early Modern Liberalism": Paper, Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, December 2005
"Savage Eloquence: Benjamin Franklin's Press at Passy, 1782-1783": Paper, opening session at American Antiquarian Society program in the History of the Book, Histories of Print, Manuscript, and Performance in America, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, June, 2005
"Hidden Hands": Paper for "Women and Early American Studies" session, Society of Early Americanists, Old Town Alexandria, VA, March/April 2005
"Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire": Paper, Society of Early Americanists, Alexandria, VA, March/April 2005
Thirty-eight additional conference papers presented.
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY TEACHING
Selected Courses for Departments of English and History and American Studies Program
English Graduate Courses in Early American Studies: "Colonialism and Discontents" (survey of colonial writings, 1492-1800, emphasizing diverse social economies); "Virtue's Commerce, Britain and North America" (studies in intellectual history and natural philosophy, focusing on Enlightenment constructions of "virtue" as a normative social strategy); "The Problem of Enlightenment"; "Race/Writing/Nation: English America and the Discourse of Nations, 1725-1820"; "Colonial Encounters, Columbian Consequences" (colonialism and Native studies); "Enlightenment Discourses, Imperial Enchantments" (European and American Enlightenment cultures, multicultural materials of the eighteenth century); "Colonialism and Discontents" (multicultural early America); Survey of Early American Studies. Different versions of courses under these titles have been offered across several years.
English Graduate Course in Pedagogy: "Teaching Literature to Undergraduates." Required of all graduate students engaged in first-time teaching of literature, the course assists with developing appropriate teaching goals and strategies, creating syllabi, assessing student performance, teaching with technology, and working toward a philosophy of teaching.
English Undergraduate and Honors Program Courses: "Fictions, Fashions, and National Passions: Novel-Reading and Novel-Writing in the Early Republic"; "Colonial Encounters, Columbian Consequences" (experimental, team-taught senior seminar), see http://www.inov8.psu.edu/siil/work/gallery/innovations/engl487w.htm; American Literature to 1865 (survey); "American Novel to 1900"; "Romancing the Novel" (genre studies in American Renaissance fiction). American Studies Courses: "Fictions, Fashions, and National Passions: Novel-Reading and Novel-Writing in the Early Republic"; "Exiled in the Land of the Free: Native Nations and U.S. Indian Policy"; "The 'Many Worlds' of Thomas Jefferson."
History Undergraduate Course: Colonial American History to 1753.
Dissertations Directed
Rochelle Raineri Zuck, "Imagined Citizens: Ethnic Nationalisms and Crises of Culture in the United States, 1816-1856" (Ph.D. 2008). Tenure track Assistant Professor of English, beginning July 2008, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Duluth, MN. Instructor, Pennsylvania State University, 2007-08
Steven Thomas, "Cultures of Liberty and Mercantilist Poetics, 1690-1765" (Ph.D. 2006). Tenure track Assistant Professor of English, beginning July 2007, College of St. Benedict / St. John's University, St. Joseph, MN. Instructor, Pennsylvania State University, 2006-2007
Youngsuk Chae, "For a Critical Multiculturalism: Politicizing Asian American Literature" (Ph.D. 2005). Tenure track Assistant Professor of English, beginning July 2007, University of North Caroline, Pembroke, Pembroke, NC. Visiting Instructor, George Mason University, 2006-07. Instructor, Northern Virginia Community College, 2004-2006
Cedrick May, "Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760-1840" (Ph.D. 2003). Tenure-track Assistant Professor, beginning August 2003, Auburn University, Auburn, AL
Elizabeth Archuleta, "'A Well-Traveled Coyote': Pueblo Cultural Narratives and Twentieth-Century American Indian Law." (Ph.D. 2002). Archuleta was granted a Ford Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship (in a program administered by the National Research Council) for the academic year 2001-2002. Tenure track Assistant Professor, beginning July 2002, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Angela Vietto, "Sisters and Citizens: Women Writing Identity in the Early American Republic" (Ph.D. 2000). Associate Professor of English, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL
Amy Winans, "Slaves and Citizens: Early African America and the Discourse of Nations" (Ph.D. 1998). Associate Professor of English, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA; Full-Time Instructor, 1996-98, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA
Nicholas Rombes, "Dark Reflections: The Terrors of Enlightenment in Early American Fiction" (Ph.D. 1994). Associate Professor of English, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MI
Additional Dissertation Committees
Timothy Orr, "A Search for Order?: Northern Urban Mobilization during the Civil War" (History, Ph.D. in progress; Director, Carol Reardon)
J. Adam Rogers, "A Forgotten Cincinnatus?: Northern Civil War Veterans and the Process of Demobilization" (History, Ph.D. in progress; Director, Carol Reardon)
Miranda Brady, "Governmentality and the National Museum of the American Indian" (Mass Communications, Ph.D. 2007; Co-Directors, Jeremy Packer and Matt McAllister)
Daniel Hicks, "True Born Columbians: The Promises and Perils of National Identity for American Seafarers of the Early Republican Period" (History, Ph.D. 2007; Director, William Pencak)
Michael Buckley, "Reading Literary Natural History: Nature, Genre, and Self in Antebellum America" (Ph.D. 2004; Director, Robert Burkholder)
Joseph Whittaker, "The Underground Theme in African American Writings" (Ph.D. 1998; Director, Bernard Bell)
Frank Pisano, "Driven by a Blast Resistless: Melville's Development as an Artist, 1846-1850" (Ph.D. 1990; Director, Robert Secor)
Anjana Sharma, "Autobiography of Desire: Jacobin Women Novelists of the 1790s" (Ph.D. 1990; Director, Nicholas Joukovsky)
Howard McConaughy, "The Sequential Structure and Covenant-Promise Theology of George Herbert's The Temple: The Importance of the Holdfast Sequence" (Ph.D. 1989; Director, John Moore)
Michael McDonough, "An Edition of the Selected Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1880-1907" (Ph.D. 1987; Director, Daniel Walden)
Master’s Essays Directed
Hannah Abelbeck, "The Buff Body Versus the Dark Horde: The Movie 300 as Neo-Fascist Allegory" (M.A. 2008)
Ana Anderson, "Divided Selves: Cultural Citizenship and the Paradoxical Subaltern in the Works of Samson Occom and Phillis Wheatley" (M.A. 2006)
Brian Neff, "Women and Conversation in the Early Republic: The Case of Charles Brockden Brown's Alcuin: A Dialogue" (M.A. 2006)
Marites Mendoza, "Mapping the Heteroglot Narrative of John Marrant: A Bakhtinian Reading of the Narrative" (M.A. 2006)
Robert Hart, Jr., "Elias Boudinot: Problems of Identity in the Cherokee Tragedy" (M.A. 2005)
Sara Mitcho, "'She Did Not Consent': William Byrd's Sensitivity to Violence against Women" (M.A. 2002)
Rochelle Zuck, "Finding a Female Voice: The Travel Writing of Catherine Maria Sedgwick and Harriet Beecher Stowe" (M.A. 2002)
Stacey Sheriff, "Heeding the Inner Light: Elizabeth Ashbridge and Early Quaker Rhetoric" (M.A. 2002)
KarenDe Herman, "Who Can Be a Virtuous Citizen?: Virtue and Federalist Society in Tabitha Tenney's Female Quixotism" (M.A. 2001)
Kelli V. Randall, "Unlocking the Mysteries of Phillis Wheatley" (M.A. 2000)
Timothy Mark Robinson, "Jupiter Hammon: Speaking Alterity and Transvaluation" (M.A. 2000)
Emily E. Van Dette, "Complicating The Coquette: Hannah Webster Foster Explains a Woman's Marriage Anxiety" (M.A. 2000)
Mark Garrett Longaker, "Solomon Stoddard's Rhetoric: Morphology, Method, and the Evolution of American Puritan Oratory" (M.A. 1999)
Heidi Oberholtzer, "Inward Light and Outward Travail: Elizabeth Ashbridge and the Genres of Spiritual Autobiography and Travel Writing" (M.A. 1999)
Laura Padilla, "A Woe Denounced on Kindred and Fathers: A Reading of A Sermon Preached by Samson Occom" (M.A. 1999)
Alicia Salome Ellis, "Shaping a Nation in the Shadow of Empire: Jefferson, Priestley, and Civil and Liberal Education" (M.A. 1998)
David Martinez, "Thomas Paine and the Economic Motives behind National Consciousness" (M.A. 1998)
Abosede Odunsi, "Contrived Christianity: Liberating Imagery and Subversive Rhetoric" (M.A. 1998)
Honors Theses Directed
Aubrey K. Porterfield, "Seeking Irish-American Identities: Nineteenth-Century Fictional Representations of the Irish in America," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 2008)
Michelle Vincent, "Virtue's Commonwealth: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Franklin's Art of Virtue," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 2005)
John Malone, "Soldiers' Masculinity and Wartime Reading Experience in the American Civil War and the War in Iraq," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 2005)
Melissa Schraeder, "'When Liberty's at Stake, A Female Storms the Throne': An Exploration of Deborah Sampson Gannett, Woman Soldier and Woman Speaker," English Department Honors (B.A. English, B.A. History, 2002; student marshal at graduation, 2002, where I served as Faculty Marshall for English)
Melissa Kowalski, "Frederick Douglass: A Literary Critique of Southern Antebellum Paternalism," English Department Honors (B.A. English, B.A. Political Science, 2001; student marshal at graduation)
Adam Bisson, "General Montcalm and the Art of Cultural Mediation," History Department Honors (B.A. History, 1999)
Steven Lutz, "Jonathan Edwards's Great Awakening," American Studies Program Honors (B.A. American Studies, 1999)
Karl E. Jancis, "The Myth of Individuality: Social Regulation in Frontier Literary Representation," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 1993)
Jeannette M. Lang, "Women of Reflection vs. Women of Action: Nathaniel Hawthorne vs. Kate Chopin," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 1991)
Emily L. Rolling, "'I'd Rather Not Be a Lady': Chopin, Phelps, and the Problem of Patriarchy," English Department Honors (B.A. English, 1990)