Curriculum Vitae
Durham, NC 27708-0001
919-684-2424
FAX: 919-684-3050
president@duke.edu
Date of Birth: April 17, 1947
Education
B.A. Yale College, 1968, summa cum laude with exceptional distinction in English
M. Phil. Yale University, 1970
Ph.D. in English Yale University, 1972
Administrative Appointments
President, Duke University, 2004-
Dean of Yale College, 1993-2004
Chair, Department of English, Yale University, 1988-93
Academic Appointments
Professor of English, Duke University, 2004-
A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English, Yale University, 1995-2004
Bird White Housum Professor of English, Yale University, 1990-95
Professor of English, Yale University, 1985-2004
Associate Professor of English, Yale University, 1977-85 (tenured 1980)
Assistant Professor of English, Yale University, 1972-77
Visiting Professor, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1989, 1991
Summer Faculty, Bread Loaf School of English, 1975-76, 1978, 1980, 1989-92
Faculty, Yale-New Haven Teachers' Institute, 1982
Honors and Awards
Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humanities, Fisk University, May 2007
Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, presented by the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association, 2006
Honorary Degree, Tsinghua University, June 2006
Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Maryland, May 2006
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2004 -
J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, 2002-2005
Bicentennial Medal, Middlebury College, 1998
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1986-87
Honors and Awards (continued)
William Clyde DeVane Medal for Outstanding Scholarship and Teaching presented by the Yale
Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, 1979
Morse Fellowship, 1976-77
Danforth Graduate Fellowship, 1968
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1968-72
Professional Activities
Chair, Next Generation Task Force, Research Triangle Foundation, 2006 -
Carnegie Corporation of New York Board, December 2004 -
Board of Directors, Research Triangle Foundation, 2004-
Board of Governors, Research Triangle Institute, 2004-
Board of Trustees, National Humanities Center, 2004-
Advisory Board, Young Faculty Leaders Forum, Harvard University, 2002-2004
Selection Committee, Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies, 1993-2003
Re-accreditation Committee, Harvard University, 1997
Advisor on the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, 1997-2004
Member of the Board, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 1994-2004
Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center, 1992-94
Chair, External Review Committee, Duke University English Department (1991); Northwestern
University English Department (1993); Brown University English Department (1997)
Board of Advisors, Program in the History of the Book, American Antiquarian Society, 1991-95
Board of Editors, Yale Journal of Criticism, 1989-95
Board of Editors, American Literary History, 1988-2003
Editorial Board, PMLA, 1988-90
Executive Committee, Nineteenth-Century American Literature Division, Modern Language
Association, 1988-92; Divisional Director, 1991
Advisory Council, American Literature Section, Modern Language Association, 1988-91
Consultant, "The Aesthetic Movement in America," Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983-86
Board of Editors, Yale Review, 1980-88
Delegate Assembly, Modern Language Association, 1981-83
Outside Examiner, Swarthmore College Honors Program, 1978, 1979
Member, Modern Language Association, American Studies Association
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Good of this Place: Values and Challenges in College Education. Yale University Press, 2004.
All the Lord’s People: Studies in the American Prophetic Tradition (in progress).
Cambridge History of American Literature, 1860–1900 (co-author, 2005).
Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America. University of Chicago
Press, 1993.
The School of Hawthorne. Oxford University Press, 1986.
Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel. University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Edited Volumes
The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt. Duke University Press, 1993.
Charles W. Chesnutt. The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales. Duke University Press, 1993.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Marble Faun. Penguin Books, 1990.
New Essays on Melville's Moby-Dick. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
William Faulkner: New Perspectives. Prentice-Hall, 1983.
Series Co-Editor, New Century Views (collections of critical essays on major authors). Prentice-Hall,
14 volumes in print, 1998.
Video/Distance Learning
Antebellum Literature: A New Birth of Freedom. (Brenzel Publishers/Yale Great Teachers Series, 1995);
On-line Version (Alllearn), 2002.
Essays
“Millennium, Prophecy and the Energies of Social Transformation: The Case of Nat Turner,” in
Abbas Amanat, ed., Imagining the End: Millennial Faith from the Ancient Middle East to
the Present (I. B. Taurus, 2002).
“Melville, or Aggression.” The Ever-Moving Dawn: Melville Centenary Essays, ed. John Bryant
and Robert Midler (Kent State University Press, 1997), 59-71.
"Two Writers' Beginnings: Eudora Welty in the Neighborhood of Richard Wright." Yale Review, 84
(April 1996), 1-21.
"Cultures of Criticism: Private Confessions of a Historicist Critic," in REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and
American Literature (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995), 1-14.
"An Anatomy of Multiculturalism." Yale Alumni Magazine (April 1994), 44-49.
"Strangers on a Train: The Double Dream of Italy in the American Gilded Age." Modernism/Modernity, 1 (1994),
1-19. Reprinted in Italian in La virtù e la libertà: Ideali e civiltà italiana nella formazione degli Stati Uniti
(Torino: Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1995), 199-224.
"After the Opening: Problems and Prospects for a Reformed American Literature." Yale Journal of Criticism, 5
(Spring 1992), 59-71.
"Regionalism and the Upper Class." Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations,
ed. Waichee Dimock and Michael T. Gilmore (Columbia University Press, 1994),
150-174. (Reprinted from Cultures of Letters).
Guest Editor's Introduction, Modern Fiction Issue, PMLA 106 (March 1991), 205-208.
"Veiled Ladies: Toward a History of Antebellum Entertainment." American Literary History, 1 (Summer 1989),
272-294. Reprinted in The American Literary History Reader, ed. Gordon Hutner (Oxford University
Press, 1995).
"Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America." Representations, 21 (Winter 1988),
67-96. Reprinted in The New American Studies, ed. Philip Fisher (University of California Press, 1990).
"Literature and Culture, 1865-1910." The Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliott (Columbia University Press, 1988), 467-481.
"Trying All Things: An Introduction to Moby-Dick." New Essays on Moby-Dick (Cambridge University Press, 1986),
1-22.
"Hawthorne and the Fate of Politics." Essays in Literature, 11 (Spring 1984), 85-103.
"Teaching Teachers: A Faculty View of the Yale-New Haven Teachers' Institute." Teaching in America: The Common Ground. New Haven, 1983; College Board, 1985.
"Faulkner and the Logic of Remaking." William Faulkner: New Perspectives (Prentice-Hall, 1983), 1-19.
"The 'New' Sister Carrie." Yale Review, 71 (1982), 597-600.
"Hawthorne, Melville, and the Fiction of Prophecy." Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Readings,
ed. A. Robert Lee (Barnes and Noble and Vision Book, 1982), 229-250.
"Hawthorne Among the Realists: The Case of Howells." American Realism: New Essays, ed. Eric J.
Sundquist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 25-42.
"Flannery O'Connor: A Life in Letters." Yale Review, 60 (1980), 451-456.
"Mardi: Creating the Creative." New Perspectives on Melville, ed. Faith Pullin (Edinburgh University
Press, 1978), 29-53.
Major Lectures
“What Universities Are Good For,” The City Club of Cleveland, November 2006
“American Prophetism at the Time of Joseph Smith,” Tanner Lecture, Mormon History Association,
May 2002
“Prophets, Publics, and Publication: The Case of John Brown,” Wiggins Lecture, American Antiquarian
Society, November 2001
“Remarks on the Tercentennial,” Yale University, October 2001
Keynote Address, “Globalizing Comparative Literature” Conference, Tsinghua University, Beijing, August 2001
“Taking Democracy to School,” DeVane Lectures: Democratic Vistas, Yale University, March 2001
Bicentennial Address, “Of Preparation For an Unknown World,” Middlebury College, September, 1998
"On Living All You Can: Some Notes on an American Idea," University of Utah, April 2000; University of California,
Berkeley, September, 1997; Princeton University, November, 1997
"The Literature of Slavery," Gilder-Lehrmann History Seminar, July, 1997
"Variations on a Shopping Trip: Washington, Chopin, and Some Others," Huntington Library/UCLA,
September, 1995
"Two Writers' Beginnings: Eudora Welty and Richard Wright," Cleanth Brooks Conference on
Southern Writing, Yale University, May, 1995. College of William and Mary, November, 1995; Huntington Library, February, 1996
"Cultures of Criticism: Private Confessions of a Historicist Critic," Keynote Address, Conference on the
Historical Study of American Literature, Freie Universitat, Berlin, November, 1994
"Hawthorne and History," Hawthorne Society Conference, Concord, June, 1994
"The Worldly Life of Books," Keynote Address, Oxford Conference for the Book, University of Mississippi,
April, 1994
"On Living All You Can: Some Notes on an American Idea," The Barrett Lecture, University of
Virginia, October, 1992; Wellesley College, May, 1993; Brandeis University, May, 1994
"The Double Dream of Italy in the American Gilded Age," America's Italy Conference, Agnelli Foundation, Washington, D.C., September, 1992
"After the Opening: Problems and Prospects for a Reformed American Literature," Texas A&M
University, April, 1991; Smith College, October, 1991; Dartmouth College, May, 1992;
Elizabeth Drew Lecture, Bread Loaf School of English, June, 1992
Seminar on The Scarlet Letter, Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne), March, 1991
"Hawthorne and Obsession," "Hawthorne and Normality," "On the Wings of the Dove," École Normale Supérieure, Paris, March, 1991
"Melville, or Aggression," Keynote Address, Italian Association for North American Studies, Rome, December, 1990; Melville Centenary Conference, Pittsfield, May, 1991
"In the Vernacular," American Studies Association, November, 1990
"What Happened to Literature?" Phillips Academy (Andover), October, 1990
"Scenes of Writing: Chesnutt, Conjure, and the Cultural Production of Regionalism," American Studies
Association, November, 1989
"Moby-Dick and the Manly Art of Self-Defense," The Shannon-Clark Lecture, Washington and Lee University, September, 1989
"Writing of the American South," Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne) March, 1989
"The Licensing of Moby-Dick," "Moby-Dick and the Manly Art of Self-Defense," "On the Wording of
Moby-Dick," École Normale Supérieure, Paris, March, 1989
"Toward a History of Literary Access," Modern Language Association, December, 1988
"Veiled Ladies," University of California, Santa Barbara, October 1988; MLA, December, 1988
"Hawthorne, Blithedale, and the Problem of Public Life," Keynote Address, Hawthorne Society Conference, Harvard and the Essex Institute, June, 1988
"Home Making: The Domestic Novel as Cultural History," American Studies Association, New York, November, 1987
"Family Reading," University of Miami, March, 1987; Université de Geneve, May, 1987
"Market, Author, Commodity," Center for Literary Studies, Harvard, February, 1987
"Fictions of Domesticity: The American Novel in the 1850's," Northwestern University, January, 1985;
University of Florida, October, 1986
"The Social Life of Fictions," Duke University Seminar on Literature and Public Policy, Washington, DC,
January, 1985
"Eudora Welty: One Writer's Beginnings," Connecticut Public Radio, November, 1984
"Rewriting American Realism," Cambridge History of American Literature Conference, Harvard University, February, 1984
"The Work of Writing in America," American Studies Association, November, 1983
"Hawthorne and the Fate of Politics," Modern Language Association, December, 1981
"Henry James and the Making of the Professions," Princeton University, April, 1981; Tudor and Stuart Club,
Johns Hopkins University, February, 1981
"Hawthorne Among the Realists," Modern Language Association, December, 1979
"American Realism and Prison of Form," Boston University, February, 1978
University Service (at Yale)
Chair, Committee on Yale College Education, 2001-2004
Chair, Social Science Planning Committee, 2000-2004
Member and (in alternating years) chair of the Tenure and Term Appointments Committees
for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1993-2004
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee and Expanded Executive Committee, 1993-2004
University Buildings and Grounds Committee, 1993-99
Committee to Restructure the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1991-92
University Budget Committee, 1988-90, 1991-92
Chairman, Department of English, 1988-93
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of English, 1985-87
Factfinder, Yale College Executive Committee, 1984-85
Executive Committee, Department of American Studies, 1983-93
Board of Editors, Yale Alumni Magazine, 1982-84
Executive Committee on Admissions Policy, 1979-81; 1993-2004
Resident Fellow and Executive Fellow, Ezra Stiles College, 1977-81
Course of Study Committee, 1973-75
Community Activities
Board of Directors, The Foote School, 1989-93
Board of Managers, Leila Day Nurseries, 1983-85
Lecture Series, Yale University Women's Organization, Fall 1981
Board of Directors, Yale Co-op, 1981-83