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Peter Jaros Associate Professor of English, Department Chair of English

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Education

Ph.D. English, Northwestern University, 2009.
 
M.A. English, Northwestern University, 2002.
 
B.A. Psychology, magna cum laude, Yale University, 1998.

Research

Early and Antebellum American Literature and Culture, Transatlantic Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Critical Theory, Print Culture, Law and Literature

Grants & Awards

NEH Post-Doctoral Fellow, Library Company of Philadelphia (2013-14)
 
Consortium Summer Faculty Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies (2011)
 
Honorable Mention, Richard Beale Davis Prize (for the best article published in Early American Literature) (2009-10)
 
Fellow, Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation (2007-09)
 
Phi Beta Kappa (1998)

Publications

“The Faculties of Law: Robert Montgomery Bird's Sheppard Lee as Legal Fiction.” (forthcoming).
 
“A Double Life: Personifying the Corporation from Dartmouth College to Poe.” Poe Studies (forthcoming).
 
“Good Names: Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 54.1 (2013).
 
“Personating Stephen Burroughs: The Apparitions of a Public Specter.” Early American Literature 44.3 (2009).
 
Translation (from French): Jean-Luc Nancy and Emmanuel Alloa, “The Real Outside Is ‘at the Heart’ of the Inside: An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy.” Atopia 9 (2006). www.atopia.tk.

Presentations

Selected Recent Presentations

“A Creature of Law in the Wilderness: Irving’s Astoria.” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Chapel Hill. 15 March 2014.

“Sheppard Lee and Supernatural Law.” Modern Language Association. Marriott Chicago Downtown. Chicago. 10 January 2014.

“Facing History: Charles Brockden Brown, Physiognomics, and Temporality.” The Revolutionary Atlantic: Acts of Alienation and Sedition, 1780-1830 (Charles Brockden Brown Society Biennial Conference). Université Paris IV—Sorbonne. Paris. 12 October 2013.

“Face Time: Charles Brockden Brown and the Temporalities of Physiognomics”; Panel Organizer: “The Temporal Turn in Early American Perspective.” Society of Early Americanists. Hyatt Regency. Savannah. 1 March 2013.

“Collective Action, Corporate Fiction, and The Confidence-Man.” Modern Language Association. Sheraton Boston. Boston, 3 January 2013.

“Crises of Personhood: Sheppard Lee and the 1837-38 Pennsylvania Convention.” American Studies Association. Puerto Rico Convention Center. San Juan, PR, 17 November 2012.

“The Antebellum Corporation in Literature and Law: A Chapter in the Prehistory of Citizens United.” Franklin & Marshall Alumni College 2012. Lancaster, PA, 1 June 2012. (Invited lecture.)

“How to Kill a Corporation: Corporate Mortality in Law and Verse”; Panel Organizer: “Corporate Fictions.” American Literature Association. Hyatt Regency. San Francisco, 26 May 2012.

“Equiano, the Author.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vancouver, Canada, 17-20 March 2011.

“Lavater and Levinas on Traits that Withdraw.” Fading Figures/Figures of Fading Colloquium. Northwestern University. Evanston, IL, 14 May 2010.

“The Swiss Atlantic? Another Look at the ‘Atlantic World.’” Society of Early Americanists. Hamilton, Bermuda, 4-7 March 2009.

“The Character of the Citizen: Physiognomy and Republicanism in the Early American Public Sphere.” Pennsylvania Historical Association. Bethlehem, PA, 16 October 2008.

“‘Fairly exposed to public view’: Picturing Stephen Burroughs.” American Literature Association. Hyatt Regency. San Francisco, 24 May 2008.

“Arresting Characters: Physiognomy and Interruption”; Panel Chair: “Shady Characters and Sketchy Science.” International Conference on Narrative. University of Texas at Austin. Austin, 2 May 2008.

Course Information

CNX 135: America from Outside

ENG 206: Studies in American Literature 1

ENG 207: Studies in American Literature 2

ENG 372: Reading Characters in American Literature

ENG 461: Making Persons in American Literature