Kenyon Gradert publishes widely on the afterlives of American literature and culture. His first book, Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination (U Chicago Press, 2020), reveals how abolitionists embraced the Puritans in the fight against slavery. His current book examines why Herman Melville went from a forgotten author to America’s most studied writer into the 20th century. His non-academic writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, LA Review of Books, The Baffler, and more.
Gradert is also an award-winning teacher with interests that range from seminars on abolitionism and environmentalism to surveys of intellectual history from the Reformation to the present. As a former farmkid and visiting faculty member at Deep Springs College, he accompanied students on cattle drives in the high desert of California’s White Mountains. (His partner was a blue-eyed pinto named Utah.)
Degrees and Certifications
PhD Washington University in St. Louis
Awards and Fellowships
- Volkswagen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Heidelberg University, Center for American Studies (2017-2018)
- Teaching Awards (2014, 2017, 2019)
- New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, Archival Research Fellow, 2016
- Graduate Affiliate, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University, 2014 - 2016
Books
Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination, University of Chicago Press, “American Beginnings, 1500 – 1900” Series, April 2020Selected Articles
- “Theodore Parker and the Problem of Criticism,” invited article for special issue of ESQ, forthcoming
- “The Mayflower and the Slave Ship: Pilgrim-Puritan Origins in the Antebellum Black Imagination,” MELUS,3 (Fall 2019)
- “Forgotten Texts: Lorenzo Dow Blackson’s Kingdoms of Light and Darkness,” African American Review, 3 (Fall 2019)
- “A Paper Puritan of Puritans: The Liberator’s Protestant Spirit in the Antebellum Public Sphere,” Journal of American Studies, 4 (Fall 2018)
- “Swept into Puritanism: Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and the Roots of Radicalism,” The New England Quarterly, 90.1 (Spring 2017)
- “Life Writing and Romantic Expressivism,” Handbook of American Romanticism, ed. Philipp Löffler, Clemens Spahr, Jan Stievermann, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021
Awards
- Volkswagen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Heidelberg University, Center for American Studies (2017-2018)
- Teaching Awards (2014, 2017, 2019)
- New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, Archival Research Fellow, 2016
- Graduate Affiliate, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University, 2014 - 2016
