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Maurice S. Lee
molee@bu.edu
Associate Professor
B.A. Stanford; Ph.D. UCLA

Teaching and Research Interests: Nineteenth-century American literature with particular emphasis on the intersections of literature, culture, philosophy, and science; American literary and intellectual history; the literature of slavery and the Civil War; African American literature, particularly before 1900.
Selected Publications: Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature: 1830-1860 (Cambridge UP, 2005); editor of The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (Cambridge UP, 2009); “Probably Poe,” American Literature; “Dickinson’s Superb Surprise,” Raritan (2008); “Melville, Douglass, the Civil War, Pragmatism,” Douglass/Melville: Essays in Relations (2007); “Which World: Which Work? Which Melville?” Modern Intellectual History (2007); “‘Read it if you can: The Language of Moby-Dick,” A Companion to Melville (2006); “‘The Old and the New’: Double Consciousness and the Literature of Slavery,” ESQ (2004); “Absolute Poe: His System of Transcendental Racism,” American Literature (2003); “Writing Through the War: The Civil War Poetry of Melville and Dickinson,” PMLA (2000); “Melville’s Subversive Political Philosophy: ‘Benito Cereno’ and the Fate of Speech,” American Literature (2000); “Du Bois the Novelist: White Influence, Black Spirit, and The Quest of the Silver Fleece,” African American Review (1999).
Work in Progress: “Chance, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature” (book project).
Honors, Grants, and Awards: Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship (2009-2010); NEH Research Fellowship (2007-2008); BU Humanities Foundation Fellowship (2007); NEH Summer Fellowship (2003); University of Missouri Research Grant (2003); James Gargano Prize (Poe Studies Association, 2003); Hennig Cohen Prize (Melville Society, 2000).