Sean McCann studies late-nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and its relation to contemporaneous political development. He is the author of A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2000), which received honorable mention for the America Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Prize for the best book in American Studies. His essays have appeared in American Quarterly, The Common Review, ELH, Radical History Review, Twentieth-Century Literature, Studies in American Fiction, the Yale Journal of Criticism, and several edited volumes.

Sean McCann received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center.