Dr. Lee Mitchell

Biography

Lee Clark Mitchell is the Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and has served as the Chair of the English Department and Director of the Program in American Studies. His scholarly interests encompass canonical American literature and popular culture, with a particular focus on classical Hollywood cinema. He teaches courses ranging from the American Renaissance to the modern American novel, as well as Native American oral traditions and classic Hollywood genres. His notable publications include 'Witnesses of a Vanishing America,' 'Determined Fictions: American Literary Naturalism,' 'Mere Reading: Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels,' and recent works on short stories and literary punctuation. A Fulbright Senior Professor, he has taught at the Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and has held fellowships at prestigious institutions including the National Humanities Center and the Huntington Library. His essays have appeared in leading journals such as Critical Inquiry, PMLA, and Novel, and he has edited several standard teaching editions of important American novels.

Research Interests