Thomas Augst

Associate Professor Of English

Education

Ph.D. 1996 (History of American Civilization), A.M. 1992 (history), Harvard; B.A. summa cum laude 1987 (literature and history), Yale

Areas of Research/Interest

American literature and culture; literacy, print culture, and the history of the book; 19th century social reform and the development of mass media; the cultural geography of humanist enterprise; graduate training and program development in digital humanities

External Affiliations

Editorial board, American Studies

C19 Advisory Board

Fellowships/Honors

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; Finalist, Prize for a First Book of the Modern Language Association; Honorable Mention, Ralph Gabriel Dissertation Prize of the American Studies Association; Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize in American Literature, Harvard University; Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship; Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

Bio

Thomas Augst teaches courses in American literature and culture. His writing focuses on literary history of the nineteenth-century, interpreting diverse forms of literacy and media in relation to questions about ethics and self-cultivation, the organization of knowledge, and the cultural politics of modern liberalism. He is the author of The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in 19th Century America (Chicago, 2003), co-editor of Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States (UMass, 2007), and co-editor of Cultural Agencies and American Libraries (2001). He earned his doctorate from Harvard University, and has received research fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. He is project director and with Nicholas Wolf, principle co-investigator of NewYorkScapes, a CAS initiative dedicated to place-based learning and project-based collaboration exploring the documentary record of the city.

Publications

  • "Archives: An introduction," American Literary History 29:2 (May, 2017): 219–227.
  • "Humanist Enterprise in the Marketplace of Culture,” in The Cosmopolitan Lyceum, ed. Thomas Wright (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013): 223-240.
    The Cosmopolitan Lyceum, ed. Thomas Wright (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013): 223-240.
  • “A Drunkard’s Story: The Market for Suffering in Antebellum America,” Common-place 10:3 (April, 2010).
    Common-place 10:3 (April, 2010).
  • “Melville, at Sea in the City” Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York, Patell and Waterman, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010): 58-75.
    Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York, Patell and Waterman, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010): 58-75.
  • “Literary Practices and the Social Life of Texts”
    Modern Intellectual History 5:3 (November, 2008): 643-655.
  • Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States
    (Co-editor). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
  • “Temperance, Mass Culture, and the Romance of Experience”
    American Literary History 19:2 (Spring, 2007).
  • “Faith in Reading: Public Libraries, Liberalism, and Civil Religion”
    Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States
  • “Finding Barnum on the Internet”
    Common-place 5:6 (October, 2005)
  • The Clerk's Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America
    Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2003.
  • "The Commerce of Thought: Professional Authority and Business Ethics in Nineteenth-Century America"
    Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 27 (2002)
  • Libraries as Agencies of Culture
    (Co-editor). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
  • "Frederick Douglass, Between Speech and Print," Professing Rhetoric: Selected Papers from the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference
    Antczak, Coggins, and Klinger, eds. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002
  • “The Costs of Character”
    ISSUE 6 (Fall, 2001)