Adam Sweeting

Associate Professor of Humanities
BA (philosophy), Clark University; MA, PhD (American studies), New York University
sweeting@bu.edu
Research interests: American literature, architectural history, nature writing

My writing and research interests focus on the overlap of natural and cultural forces in American life.

In my most recent book, Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History of Indian Summer (2003), I explore the numerous ways that Indian summer weather has been experienced and portrayed in poetry, folklore, painting, and the popular imagination. I am interested in popular conceptions of the season as seen in magazine poetry and oral traditions concerning the history of this brief but beautiful time of year. I also examine how major writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickinson presented the season in their work. For them, Indian summer represented a unique moment when the cool temperatures of the fall are suddenly replaced by warm and dry air. It was a magical and poetic time of year that encouraged their respective meditations on mortality and the possibilities for spiritual and physical rebirth.

My first book, Reading Houses and Building Books: Andrew Jackson Downing and the Architecture of Popular Antebellum Fiction (1996), examines the relationship between garden writing, architecture, and fiction in the nineteenth century.

Currently, together with Natalie McKnight, my Humanities colleague at CGS, I am completing an anthology of major works of western literature and art. We include introductory essays that place the works within their cultural and historical contexts. The interdisciplinary and chronological approach closely reflects the approach we take to teaching the freshman humanities course at CGS.

I also have started a new book entitled Evening’s Empire: A Cultural History of Nighttime in America. I plan to consider the history of technologies that illuminate the night: fire, whale oil lamps, gas lamps, electricity, and neon. I am especially interested in how our technological and cultural innovations have altered our sense of the naturalness of the night.

Read about an international conference on ecocriticism I hosted in the BU Bridge.

In 2006 I was honored as the United Methodist Church Scholar / Teacher of the Year and in I won the Peyton Richter Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching.