Dr. Samuel Otter

Biography

Samuel Otter has been a faculty member in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley since 1990, where he served as department chair from 2009 to 2012. His research and teaching focus on 19th-century American literatures, particularly the intersections of literature and history, varieties of literary excess, and the methods of close textual interpretation. Otter's notable publications include 'Melville’s Anatomies' (California, 1999), an analysis of Melville and his long fiction of the 1840s and 1850s, and 'Philadelphia Stories' (Oxford, 2010), which examines narratives of race and freedom produced by the “free” African American communities of Philadelphia from 1790 to 1860. He is currently working on a book titled 'Melville’s Forms,' which aims to explore the entirety of Melville's career by evaluating issues of form and its implications in literary criticism. Throughout his career, Otter has served on the editorial boards of important journals and has published essays in prestigious outlets such as American Literature and PMLA. He has also taught a variety of undergraduate courses, seminars, and graduate seminars focused on topics including American Transcendentalism and literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Research Interests

Courses