Lecturer of English
Research Areas: 19th-21st century American literature; visual and material culture; narratives of traversal
Thomas J. Otten specializes in American literatures of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, with a focus on visual and material culture. He is the author of A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World (2006), a book which grapples with that strange thing the Jamesian thing, and which ends with a manifesto for a literary study that catches onto the surfaces and textures of everyday life. He has published essays on Jorie Graham, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Pauline Hopkins in ELH, American Literature, PMLA, and MLQ among others, and is currently studying narratives of traversal through the commodity-world of late capitalism.
Selected Publications:
A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World (Ohio State University Press, 2006)
“Hawthorne’s Twisted Letters,” Modern Language Quarterly (2009)
“Emily Dickinson’s Brain: On Lyric and the History of Anatomy,” Prospects (2005)
For a detailed academic bio and CV, please see Professor Otten’s Department Profile.