Wesleyan Home → American Studies → Faculty
Faculty
Chair
Patricia Hill
Professor of American StudiesShow BioBA College of Wooster
PHD Harvard University
AMST175 - 01
Soundscapes in American Cultur
AMST200 - 01
Colonialism & Its Consequences
AMST236 - 01
Religion and National Culture
AMST330 - 01
American Utopias
Office Hours: Fall 2013:
Research Interests: Professor of History Patricia Hill specializes in 19th-century U.S. cultural, women, and religious history. Her study, The World Their Household, examines the ways in which the Protestant mission movement worked to produce cultural transformations abroad while reflexively transforming American culture. She has participated in recent regional and national discussions focusing on internationalizing the American Studies curriculum.
Faculty
Matthew Garrett
Assistant Professor of EnglishShow Bio and Photo
Assistant Professor of English
285 Court Street 309
860-685-3598
Assistant Professor, American Studies
Faculty Fellow
BA Bard College
MA Stanford University
MPHIL Cambridge University
PHD Stanford University
ENGL203 - 01
Am Lit: Colonial to Civil War
ENGL258 - 01
New World Poetics
ENGL151 - 01
American Revolutions
ENGL380 - 01
In Place of Reading
Personal Homepage:
http://mcgarrett.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Office Hours: Office hours: Tuesday, 3-4pm, and by appointment. Office Location: Center for the Humanities #203
Research Interests: Matthew Garrett's writing and teaching concern the relationship between literary form and social history. His book, "Out of Many: Episodic Poetics in the Early American Republic" (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), traces an early American and transatlantic culture of the episode across the period's major genres of prose writing -- from wildly plotted novels to peculiarly constructed memoirs and linked serial essays. The book shows how, in ways both magisterial and mundane, social and political conflicts took variegated shape in a literary culture founded upon the episode, that omnipresent narrative unit so often taken for granted by writers and readers. The result is literary history recounted not as the easy victory of grand nationalist ambitions, but rather as a series of social struggles expressed through writers' recurring engagement with incompletely integrated forms. Professor Garrett's work appears in American Quarterly, ELH, the Journal of Cultural Economy, and Radical History Review.
Scholarly Keywords: American literature; literary theory; politics and literature
Megan Glick
Assistant Professor of American StudiesShow BioAssistant Professor of American Studies
BA Northwestern University
MA Yale University
MPHIL Yale University
PHD Yale University
AMST248 - 01
Popular Culture/Social Justice
AMST317 - 01
Disability/Embodiment/Technolo
AMST208 - 01
Visual Culture and Violence
AMST260 - 01
Bio-ethics: Animal/Human
Brian Hoffman
Visiting Assistant Professor of American StudiesShow BioVisiting Assistant Professor of American Studies
860-685-2350
BA Calif St U Los Angls
PHD University of Illinois Urbana
Indira Karamcheti
Associate Professor of American StudiesShow Bio and Photo
Associate Professor of American Studies
255 High Street 205
860-685-3625
Director, Center for the Americas
860-685-3625
Faculty Fellow
BA University Calif Santa Bar
MA University Calif Santa Bar
PHD University Calif Santa Bar
AMST200 - 01
Colonialism & Its Consequences
AMST241 - 01
Childhood in America
HUMS614 - 01
Personalizing History
AMST247 - 01
Caribbean Writers in the U.S.
AMST318 - 01
New England and Empire
Office Hours:
Fall 2012: Location: 255 High St #205: Wednesday 10-12
Research Interests:
Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies Indira Karamcheti is an important new voice in the field of postcolonial literature. Her broad ranging interests in the geographics of marginality encompasses Caribbean and African-American literatures.
J. Kehaulani Kauanui
Associate Professor of AnthropologyShow BioAssociate Professor of Anthropology
Center for the Americas 211
860-685-3768
Associate Professor of American Studies
Center for the Americas 211
860-685-3768
BA University Calif Berkeley
PHD University Calif Santa Crz
AMST255 - 01
Anarchy in America
AMST314 - 01
U.S. in the Pacific Islands
AMST176 - 01
Race and Citizenship
ANTH111 - 01
Hawai`i: Myths and Realities
Personal Homepage:
http://jkauanui.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Office Hours: I will be holding office hours on Mondays from 2-4pm, and by appointment, in my office at the Center for the Americas, room 216.
Research Interests: See: http://jkauanui.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Scholarly Keywords: See: http://jkauanui.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Courtney Lewis
Andew W. Mellon Postdoctoral FellowShow Bio and PhotoBA University of Michigan
MA Wayne State University
PHD University of North Carolina
Personal Homepage:
http://calewis.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Research Interests:
See http://calewis.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Scholarly Keywords:
See http://calewis.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ph.D. in Anthropology Wayne State University M.A. in Economics University of Michigan B.A. in Economics
Elizabeth McAlister
Associate Professor of ReligionShow Bio and Photo
Associate Professor of Religion
171 Church Street
860-685-2289
Associate Professor, African American Studies
860-685-2289
Associate Professor, American Studies
860-685-2289
Chair, Religion Department
860-685-2289
BA Vassar College
MA Yale University
MA Yale University
MPHIL Yale University
PHD Yale University
Personal Homepage:
http://emcalister.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Office Hours: Spring 2013: by appointment
Research Interests: Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth McAlister is a specialist in the study of African-based religions in the Americas, with a particular focus on Haiti. Her work addresses the broader issues of religion and the social construction of race. She is the author of Rara! Vodou, Power and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora (University of California Press, 2002).
Publications:
http://emcalister.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Elizabeth Milroy
Professor of Art HistoryShow Bio and Photo
Professor of Art History
41 Wyllys Avenue 304
860-685-3148
Professor, American Studies
41 Wyllys Avenue
860-685-3148
Professor, Environmental Studies
860-685-3148
BA Queens University
MA Williams College
PHD University of Pennsylvania
Office Hours:
Fall 2012 - Spring 2013: On Leave
Research Interests:
Elizabeth Milroy teaches the history of art and material culture in North America. Her courses range from general surveys of art in the United States and Canada from First Contact to 1945, to courses treating the history of sculpture and courses in the history of cultural landscapes and historic preservation to advanced seminars in cultural institutions and exhibitionary practices as well as the work of individual artists such as Thomas Eakins and Georgia O'Keeffe. She also teaches a junior colloquium on material culture studies for the America Studies program. A specialist in the history of cultural institutions and cultural landscapes in the United States, in particular those in Philadelphia, she has organized exhibitions and has published numerous articles and catalogue essays. Her most recent publications include "For the like Uses, as the Moore-Fields: The Politics of Penns Squares,"in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (2006); "Repairing the Myth and Reality of Penn's Squares: 1800-1850," in Change Over Time (2011). Her essay, "Pro Bono Publico: Ecology, History and the Creation of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park System" is forthcoming in Nature's Entrepot: Philadelphia's Urban Sphere and its Environmental Thresholds, edited by Michael Chiarrappa and Brian Black (University of Pittsburgh Press; for 2012). Her current book project is "The Grid and the River: A History of Philadelphia's Green Spaces, 1682-1882."
Scholarly Keywords:
American Art (painting, sculpture, graphic arts), 17th to 20th centuries Canadian Art (painting, sculpture, graphic arts), 17th to 20th centuries Cultural Landscape Studies Material Culture Studies
Academic Associations:
College Art Association American Studies Association American Society for Environmental History Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences Historical Society of Pennsylvania External Examiner, Sotheby's Institute of Art (University of Manchester, UK), 2007-10 Winterthur Portfolio Editorial Board
Grants:
NEH Research Fellowship, 2002 Project Grant, Wesleyan University, 2001 Pedagogical Grant, Wesleyan University 1997/98 Keck Mentorship Grant. Wesleyan University 1997 Charles Peterson Fellowship in Architectural History. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia 1996/97 Faculty Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University 1996 Mellon Fellowship, The Library Company of Philadelphia 1995 Faculty Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University 1992 Mellon Residential Research Fellowship, American Philosophical Society 1992 Research Grant, American Philosophical Society 1992 NEH Summer Stipend 1992 NEH Travel to Collections Grant 1992 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Grant 1991 NEH Exhibition Planning Grant 1989 Penfield Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1983
Editorial Boards: Winterthur Portfolio Change Over Time
Joel Pfister
Professor of EnglishShow Bio and Photo
Professor of English
Downey House 303
860-685-3603
Professor, American Studies
Downey House 303
860-685-3603
Olin Professor of English
860-685-3603
BA Columbia University
MA University of London
MA University of Sussex
PHD Yale University
AMST204 - 01
Junior Coll Cul Pwr & Amer St
ENGL175 - 01
Staging America
ENGL204 - 01
American Literature, 1865-1945
Office Hours: Spring '13: Monday 2:00-4:00 PM
Research Interests: Joel Pfister, Olin Professor, has written THE PRODUCTION OF PERSONAL LIFE: CLASS, GENDER, AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IN HAWTHORNE'S FICTION (Stanford University Press, 1991); STAGING DEPTH: EUGENE O'NEILL AND THE POLITICS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOURSE (University of North Carolina Press, 1995); (co-editor of) INVENTING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL: TOWARD A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EMOTIONAL LIFE IN AMERICA (Yale University Press, 1997); INDIVIDUALITY INCORPORATED: INDIANS AND THE MULTICULTURAL MODERN (Duke University Press, 2004), CRITIQUE FOR WHAT? CULTURAL STUDIES, AMERICAN STUDIES, LEFT STUDIES (Paradigm Publishers, 2006) and THE YALE INDIAN: THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ROE CLOUD (Duke University Press, 2009). He teaches a core theory course, "Cultural Power and American Studies," in American Studies as well as English courses in American literature and culture from the colonial period to the present. Professor Pfister has received several fellowships, such as an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship and a Rockefeller fellowship, and has lectured in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as well as the United States and Canada. Recently he served as chair of American Studies and after that chair of English. He was a Visiting Scholar in the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies in the Graduate School in the Freie Universitat in Berlin for the summer term in 2011. In July, 2012, he served on the faculty of the West-China Faculty Enhancement Program in American Studies, co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the China Association for the Study of American Literature, and taught Chinese college and university professors American literature as American Studies in Xi'an, China.
Amy Tang
Assistant Professor of EnglishShow Bio and Photo
Assistant Professor of English
285 Court Street 202
860-685-3595
Assistant Professor of American Studies
285 Court Street 202
860-685-3595
BA Harvard University
PHD Stanford University
AMST202 - 01
Representing Race Amer Culture
ENGL201L - 01
Ways of Reading: Difference
AMST291 - 01
Afro-Asian Intersections
ENGL230 - 01
Intro to Asian American Lit
Personal Homepage:
http://atang.faculty.wesleyan.edu
Office Hours: On Sabbatical Leave Spring 2013
Research Interests: Amy Tang is Assistant Professor of English and American Studies. Her research focuses on the relationship between aesthetic form and politics in Asian American literature and theory. She is completing a book, Repetition in Asian American Culture, which explores the politics and poetics of repetition in Asian American literature, art, and criticism. Avoiding the political romanticism that accompanies prevailing understandings of repetition, the book reconsiders the political grammar of trauma, mimicry, intertextuality, pastiche, and self-reflexivity, demonstrating that repetition in Asian American culture is not simply a technology for reclaiming the past but rather a strategy for illuminating, and sometimes modeling alternatives to, the social and cultural contradictions of the present. She holds a Ph.D from Stanford University (2009) and a B.A. from Harvard University (1994).
Scholarly Keywords: Asian American literature; African American literature; literary and cultural theory and criticism
Margot Weiss
Assistant Professor of American StudiesShow Bio and Photo
Assistant Professor of American Studies
Center for the Americas 211
860-685-5754
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Center for the Americas 211
860-685-5754
BA University of Chicago
MA Duke University
PHD Duke University
AMST293 - 01
Politics of the Body
ANTH398 - 01
Queer/Anthropology
AMST201 - 01
Critical Queer Studies
ANTH208 - 01
Crafting Ethnography
Personal Homepage:
http://mdweiss.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Office Hours: Spring 2013: Monday and Wednesday 1-2 in CAMS 211
Research Interests: Margot Weiss specializes in the ethnography of contemporary sexual cultures and politics. Her first book, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Duke University Press) won the 2012 Ruth Benedict Book Prize for best monograph in queer anthropology and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies. Her current research with North American queer left activists focuses on the possibilities and parameters of a radical political imagination at a time of economic crisis. The research is supported by a Wenner-Gren Post-Ph.D. Research Grant, Osmundsen Initiative Award, and CLAGS Joan Heller-Diane Bernard Senior Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies. She has published essays on the politics of BDSM media visibility; on labor, leisure, and commodified sexuality; on the performative effects of BDSM interrogation scenes and the Abu Ghraib photographs; on neoliberalism, homonormativity, and new queer activisms; on methods in queer anthropology; and on left intellectuals and activism in the neoliberal university.
Scholarly Keywords: anthropology of sexuality and gender, queer studies, social theory
Publications:
http://works.bepress.com/mdweiss/


