Anthony Shoplik

Dissertation Summary

The Conservation of Races: Environment and Racial Formation in American Literature, 1880-1980: This dissertation seeks to examine a term, the “New American race,” and the model of racial identity that made the idea of an American race available to writers in the early twentieth century. I argue that in this period environmental thinking played a crucial and conceptually enabling role for the production and conservation of racial difference. Committed to the belief that environments were a critical component and agent of racial, cultural, and civilizational formation and maintenance, writers in this period transformed American environments, previously believed to be a racial liability (e.g., colonists’ fear of “Indianization”), into a racial resource.

Education

BA in English from John Carroll University (2018); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2019)

Research Interests

Modernism, Literature and Identity, and Poetry and Poetics