Department of English

John Burt

John BurtDepartment Chair
Paul E. Prosswimmer Professor of American Literature
PhD, Yale University
Meet Professor Burt through OpenBook: An English Department Podcast.

Pronouns: he/him/his

Research Interests

19th-century American literature, 20th-century American literature (especially poetry), Southern Gothic fiction, American romantic fiction, composition, rhetoric.

Selected Publications

  • "Political Violence and the Persuasive Engagement in Frederick Douglass," Literary Imagination, Volume 23, Issue 2, July 2021, 111-136.
  • "Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism." Harvard University Press, 2013Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism book cover
  • "Victory." Turning Point Press, 2007
  • "Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren." Editor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2002
  • "The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren." Editor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1998.
  • "Work Without Hope." Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
  • "Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism." New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
  • "The Way Down." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Articles and poetry in ELH, Yale Review, Poetry Miscellany, Chicago Review, Shenandoah, and other journals.

Selected Awards

  • Prize Americana, 2024
  • Fellowship, Newhouse Humanities Center at Wellesley College, 2006-07
  • Guggenhein Fellowship, 1997
  • ACLS Fellowship, 1997

Selected Courses Taught

  • American Gothic & American Romance (ENG 177a)
  • Fiction of the American South (ENG 207b)
  • American Realism & Naturalism (ENG 126a)

  • Romanticism II: Byron, Shelley & Keats (ENG 125b)