Kurt Cavender

Kurt holds a PhD in American Literature from Brandeis University, with a focus on modern and contemporary print and screen culture. His research has been published in the journals College Literature, Post45, and Arizona Quarterly, as well as the edited collections Reading Modernism with Machines (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and Literature and Event (Routledge 2021). Most recently, he has served as the North America section editor for The Environmental Futures Reader (forthcoming from Brandeis UP 2024), a global anthology of contemporary climate fiction. Before coming to Boston University, Kurt was an assistant professor of English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania for three years, and programs assistant at the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University for two years. 

Representative Publications

“The Specter of St. Louis: Genre, Globalization, and the Problem of White Nationalism in Contemporary Lindbergh Fiction.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 77.1 (Spring 2021): 83-106.

“Literature, Event, and Formal Compossibility .” in Literature and Event (Routledge, 2021).

“Introduction, North America.” in Environmental Futures: An International Literary Anthology (Brandeis University Press, 2024).