William Epstein

Professor Epstein has a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College and an M.A. and PhD. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His publications include the first book-length biography of the 18th-century British novelist John Cleland (Columbia UP), the first postmodern and New-Historicist study of the generic poetics of English biography (UP Pennsylvania), a prize-winning article on Cold-War criticism and 18th-century studies (ELH), and edited collections on the theory and practice of biography (Purdue UP) and on biopics and American National Identity (a/b, SUNY Press). He has contributed many articles to learned journals on 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century British literature, lifewriting, the professional practice of literary study, and genre theory. His work has been nominated for the James Russell Lowell Prize (MLA), the Louis Gottschalk Prize (American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies), and the Christian Gauss Award (Phi Beta Kappa), and won the James L. Clifford Prize (ASECS). He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the novel in English, post-Renaissance British literature, critical theory and practice, and drama. He has also published fiction and creative non-fiction, done a lot of acting, most of it local, and just finished a play, a one-man performance piece.