Dr. Jed Esty

Biography

Jed Esty teaches and writes about Anglophone literature after 1850, focusing on modernism, critical theory, history of the novel, and colonial and postcolonial studies. He has a particular interest in the Victorian novel and post-1945 U.S. culture. Esty received his BA from Yale University and his PhD from Duke University. He taught at Harvard University and the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. Esty is the author of several notable works including 'Future Decline: Anglo-American Culture Limits' (Stanford 2022), 'Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism, Fiction Development' (Oxford 2012), and 'Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England' (Princeton 2004). He is currently working on a new project entitled 'Cold War Victorians: Genre System in the Angloworld.' Esty has coedited works, including a special issue of MLQ focusing on realism in postcolonial and ethnic literatures, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has published essays in noted journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Victorian Studies, and PMLA.

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Experience

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