American Literature
The English Department is fortunate to have a large number of prominent and productive faculty teaching and researching in the area of American literature and culture. A significant percentage of our graduate student population is doing Americanist work of one kind or another, and our students are able to produce excellent and challenging work that translates into professional success by working closely with our faculty members, who include:
Dimitri Anastasopoulos: Contemporary American fiction and non-fiction.
Carrie Tirado Bramen: Nineteeth-century; Latina/o literature.
Joseph Conte: Twentieth-century and postmodern fiction/theory.
Robert Daly: American Literature, Puritans to the Present.
Kenneth Dauber: Nineteenth-century, especially Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau.
Stacy Hubbard: Nineteenth-century; modernism, especially poetry.
Bruce Jackson: American culture, documentary, folklore, Faulkner.
Myung Mi Kim: Poetry and poetics.
Ming Qian Ma. Poetry and poetics.
Steve McCaffery: Contemporary literature; poetry and poetics.
Cristanne Miller: Nineteenth-century (especially Emily Dickinson); American modernism.
Susan Moynihan: Asian-American; Autobiography.
David Schmid: Twentieth-Century and contemporary fiction; popular culture; cultural studies.
Neil Schmitz: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century; Twain.
Mark Shechner: Twentieth-Century.
Williams Solomon: Twentieth-Century, especially modernist fiction.
Alan Spiegel: Twentieth-Century; Film.
Scott Manning Stevens: American Indian literature.
Dennis Tedlock: Native American Literature; Ethnopoetics.
Hershini Bhana Young: Contemporary Black Diasporic Literature.
Apart from enjoying the professional development opportunities provided by the Graduate Amercianist Group, our graduate students in this field are also able to work with faculty from a variety of other departments at UB, including:
Masani Alexis De Veaux (Global Gender Studies): black diasporic writing, black women writers, black feminist theory.
Michael Frisch (History): Oral history, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century US History.
Keith Griffler (African American Studies): African-American studies; African diaspora history.
Carl H. Nightingale (American Studies): the history of race, world history, and urban history.
Justin Read (Romance Languages and Literatures): transamerican poetics with emphasis in Spanish-American vanguardismo, Brazilian modernismo, and U.S. modernism.
Theresa Runstedtler (American Studies): transnational Black history encompassing English, French, and Spanish destinations; multiracial and multicultural histories; the history of empire and globalization, popular culture.
Erik Seeman (History): colonial North America: religion, Indians, African-Americans, death.
Ramón Soto-Crespo (American Studies): Latina/o and Caribbean literature, Continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer studies.
Tamara Plakins Thornton (History): American intellectual and cultural history.
Margarita Vargas (Romance Languages and Literatures): Spanish-American theatre; Mexican literature; contemporary theory.
Kari Winter (American Studies): history and literature of transatlantic slavery, resistance, dissent, and revolution.
Cynthia Wu (American Studies): Asian American and comparative ethnic cultural studies.
Jason Young (History): The Black Atlantic, U.S. Slave culture and religion, pre-colonial Kongo.
