Blevin Shelnutt

Blevin Shelnutt is an Assistant Professor of English who specializes in early and nineteenth-century American literature, material culture, and the history of books as physical objects. Her research and teaching develop an interdisciplinary, archives-based approach to literary study, examining literary history and aesthetics in relation to material contexts of textual production and the distribution of cultural power. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Marketplace Aesthetics: Literary Art and the Publishing Revolution in Nineteenth-Century New York City, which reevaluates the relationship between literary aesthetics and the development of the publishing industry in New York during the 1840s and 50s. Her research has been supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and short-term fellowships at the Library Company of Philadelphia, American Antiquarian Society, and Rare Book School. Her work has appeared in American Literary History, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and the Norton Critical Edition of the eighteenth-century seduction novel, The Coquette. Her courses intersect with offerings in several multidisciplinary programs, including American Studies; Global Nineteenth-Century Studies; and Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies. Recent courses include American Bestsellers, Literature of the American Renaissance, and Popular Women Writers and the Work of Art.