Susan L. Mizruchi

Research Areas: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature; religion and culture; literary and social theory; literary history; and history of the social sciences.

Susan L. Mizruchi is Professor of English Literature at Boston University.  She received B.A.’s in English and in History from Washington University in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985.  Professor Mizruchi’s specialties are nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature; religion and culture; literary and social theory; literary history; and history of the social sciences.  She has taught courses in literature, gender, and film at Boston University for twenty-nine years.  Publications include: Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work (Norton, 2014); Film Rights Sold, 2014; Paperback Published, 2015; The Rise of Multicultural America (North Carolina UP, 2008); Becoming Multicultural: Culture, Economy, and the Novel, 1860–1920 (Cambridge UP 2005);  The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory (Princeton UP, 1998); The Power of Historical Knowledge: Narrating the Past in Hawthorne, James, & Dreiser (Princeton, 1988); and, as editor Religion and Cultural Studies, editor (Princeton UP, 2001) and contributor to The Norton Critical Edition of The Souls of Black Folk (1999) and Everyman Edition of The Bostonians (1994).  She is the recipient of many academic honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS, and the Fulbright Commission. She is the recipient, most recently, of the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education, 2015, and the Financial Times ‘Best Books of 2014 and Booklist Editor’s Choice, 2014’ for Brando’s Smile.  She serves as the U.S. Delegate for Literature, Film and Media Studies for Oxford University Press, and a consultant for PBS, the Princeton University English Department Advisory Council, and the NEH, NHA, ACLS, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others.

Selected Publications:
Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work (W.W. Norton, 2014)

“The School of Martyrdom: Culture and Class in ‘Catcher in the Rye,’” Religion and Literature (Summer 2015), pp. 23-40.

The Rise of Multicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)

The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory (Princeton University Press, 1998)

For a detailed academic bio and CV, please see Professor Mizruchi’s Department Profile.