Peter Gibian
American literature and culture before 1900 (especially mid-19th-c. "American Renaissance"); short story; public sphere theory; oral models for writing (oratory, conversation); cosmopolitanism, internationalism, transnationalism; critical theory.
Ph.D. (Stanford)
M.A. (New York University)
B.A. (Yale)
Two ongoing book projects: 1) one tracing the emergence of a 鈥渃osmopolitan tradition鈥 in American thinking and writing over the course of the long 19th century; 2) the other exploring the influence of two competing oral modes of public verbal expression鈥攐ratory and conversation鈥攐n Whitman鈥檚 written poetics, defining contrasting but also complementary notions of the 鈥減ublic鈥 and also of 鈥減ublic life.鈥
- 鈥淰oicing Whitman: Poetry and Public Life in an Age of Oratory and Conversation.鈥
- 鈥溾楢merican Cosmopolites鈥: Recovering a Cosmopolitan Tradition in American Writing and Experience.鈥
Books
(Cambridge University Press, 2001; reprint 2009)
- Awarded the Best Book Prize in 2001-02 by NEASA, the New England聽American Studies Association聽
Editor and contributor, (Routledge, 1997)
Articles and Chapters
鈥淲riting between Worlds: Washington Irving and the Cosmopolitan Tradition in American Literature and Art鈥聽(In Progress)
鈥淐ompeting Spatial Impulses in the Cosmopolitan World of George Washington Cable鈥檚 New Orleans,鈥 special issue of Romantisme, on 鈥淣ew Scales of Regionalist Writing,鈥 (Winter 2018).
in A Seamless Web: Transatlantic Art in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Marian Wardle and Cheryll L. May (2014). Link to chapter:聽
鈥淭he Lecture Room as Contact Zone: Bayard Taylor鈥檚 Travel Lectures,鈥 in The Cosmopolitan Lyceum, ed. Thomas Wright (2013)
鈥淎nticipating Aestheticism: The Dynamics of Reading and Reception in Poe,鈥 in Short Story Theories: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective, ed. Viorica Patea (2012)
鈥淗ale鈥檚 鈥楾he Man Without a Country鈥 and America鈥檚 Postwar Crisis of National Belonging,鈥 CRAS (Canadian Review of American Studies) (2012)
鈥淭he Image and Its Discontents: Hawthorne, Poe, and the Double Bind of 鈥業conoclash鈥,鈥 Journal of the Short Story in English 56 (Spring 2011)
鈥淟evity and Gravity in Twain: The Bipolar Dynamics of the Early Tales,鈥 reprint of 1994 journal article, in Mark Twain鈥檚 Short Stories, ed. Harold Bloom (2011)
鈥淒r. Holmes: The Life in Conversation,鈥 Oliver Wendell Holmes: Physician and Man of Letters, (Harvard University Medical School, 2009).
鈥淗erman Melville, Cosmopolitanism, and Traveling Culture,鈥 The Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville (2006)
"The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," American History through Literature, 1820-1870 ( 2006)
鈥淟鈥檌mplicite, l鈥檌mplication, et la complicit茅 dans deux contes d鈥橢dgar Poe,鈥 L'Implicite dans la nouvelle de langue anglaise (2005)
"" The Mickle Street Review (October 2004).聽
"A 'Traveling Culture': Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature," Annals of Scholarship (Spring 2002)
"The Old Order on the Threshold of the Modern: James, Wharton, Adams," in The American Century (1999)
"People Movers: Snow, Pound, Muybridge and the Stop-Action Arts of Consumer Culture," in American Modernism Across the Arts (1999)
"Defining the Oratorical Culture of Victorian America: Elocutionary Style and Political Stance in Walt Whitman and Edward Everett," Intellectual History (Fall 1994)
"The Art of Being Off-Center": Shopping Center Spaces and Spectacles," Signs of Life in the U.S.A. (1994)
"Opening and Closing the Conversation: Style and Stance from Holmes Senior to Holmes Junior," in The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1992)
Book Reviews聽
颈苍听Nineteenth-Century Literature, Journal of American History, New England Quarterly, American Historical Review, Modern Philology.
- Principal鈥檚 Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 2009 (平特五不中)
- Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Research Grant, 2006-2009
- Louis Dudek Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2007-08 (English Dept., 平特五不中)
- Lois Rudnick Prize for Best Book in 2001-02 (given by New England chapter of the American Studies Association)
- NASSA Teaching Award, North American Studies Student Association, 平特五不中, 2005
- H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching (given by Faculty of Arts, 平特五不中, 2003)
Stanford University (Palo Alto, California)
Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts)