Brian Yothers, Ph.D.
Chair; Professor
English
Education
- B.A. Grace College
- M.A. Purdue University
- Ph.D. Purdue University
Research Interests
Research interests include early and nineteenth-century American literature, religion and literature, the literature of slavery and freedom, the literature of travel, intercultural contact and dialogue, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, the digital humanities, and the public humanities. He is also the editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and of the Camden House Press series Literary Criticism in Perspective, a co-editor of the Melville Electronic Library, an associate editor of Melville’s Marginalia Online, and a past co-editor of Journeys.
Publications and Media Placements
Books
Authored:
Why Antislavery Poetry Matters Now. Boydell and Brewer/ Camden House Press, June 2023. 308 pp.
Reading Abolition: The Critical Response to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. Camden House/Boydell & Brewer, 2016. 196 pp.
Sacred Uncertainty: Religious Difference and the Shape of Melville’s Career. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, April 2015. 256 pp.
Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author. Rochester, NY: Camden House Press, 2011. 222 pp.
Paperback edition with new preface for the Melville Bicentennial published in April
2019. 232 pp.
The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790-1876. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. 156 pp.
Edited volumes and special issues:
The Long Journey: Explorations in Travel and Travel Writing. Berghahn Books, October 1, 2020. Coedited with Maria Pia Di Bella, EHESS-Paris and
Harvard Divinity School. 220 pp.
Melville at 200. Co-edited with Samuel Otter, University of California at Berkeley. Johns Hopkins
UP, 2019-20, four special issues of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies in acknowledgment of the bicentennial of Melville’s birth. 752 pp.
Above the American Renaissance: David S. Reynolds and the Spiritual Imagination in
American Literary Studies. Co-edited with Harold K. Bush. University of Massachusetts Press, May 2018. 315 pp.
The Scarlet Letter: Critical Insights. Salem Press, 2018. 280 pp.
Billy Budd: Critical Insights. Salem Press, 2017. 280 pp.
Visionary of the Word: Melville and Religion. Northwestern UP, January 15, 2017. Co-edited with Jonathan A. Cook. 304 pp.
South Asia and the Americas. Special issue of Journeys: The International Journal
of Travel and Travel Writing. Coedited with Pramod Nayar, University of Hyderabad. 10.1 (2009). 146 pp.
Scholarly Editions
Herman Melville, The Piazza Tales. Broadview Press, August 2018. 296 pp.
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno. Broadview Press. November, 2019. 248 pp.
Honors and Awards
- Principal Investigator, Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, 2018-2023.
- UT Regents Outstanding Teaching Award, 2014.