American Renaissance: 19th Century Classic Literature

Donald E. Pease serves as the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth College, where he chairs the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program. His influential career spans over four decades of scholarship in American Studies. As founding director of the Futures of American Studies Institute, he has shaped the field's development for 24 summers. His work challenged traditional paradigms through the New Americanists movement, which transformed knowledge production in literature departments across the United States. His scholarship ranges from 19th-century American literature to modern American drama, including an acclaimed interpretive biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. He has received prestigious fellowships from Guggenheim, Mellon, Ford, and Hewlett foundations, and was awarded the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize from the American Studies Association. His recent work examines national narratives, imperial state exceptionalisms, and transnational American Studies, while continuing to influence the field through his editorship of multiple book series at Duke University Press and his direction of the Re-Mapping the Transnational series.