Anne Baker

View CV 

Bio

Anne Baker earned a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University and has taught at NCSU since 2001.  She specializes in nineteenth-century American literature and culture.

Projects

I am currently writing about Susanna Rowson (1762-1824), a novelist, actress, and educator who wrote the first best-selling novel in the United States.

Responsibilities

My responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in my areas of specialization, writing books and articles, serving on committees, and advising MA students.

Extension and Community Engagement

• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, at Beaufort, NC Public LIbrary, Nov. 4, 2013.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on E.L. Doctorow’s The March, at Oxford, NC Public Library, August 6^th, 2012.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, at Burlington, NC Public Library, July 30^th, 2012
• Served as a faculty scholar for Teachers Institute (weeklong seminar for secondary school teachers) in Chapel Hill,  June 17 – June 23^rd, 2012
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, at Yanceyville, NC Public Library, April 18, 2011.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, at Cameron Village Public Library (Raleigh), February 13, 2011.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, at Williamston, NC Public Library, Feb. 10, 2009.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Mark Twain’s Puddnhead Wilson, at Beaufort, NC Public Library, Oct. 6, 2008.
• Public lecture sponsored by NC Humanities Council on Twain’s Puddnhead Wilson, at Rockingham, NC Public Library, Feb. 24, 2009.
• Pre-show talk at Stewart Theater for performance of Moby-Dick Rehearsed, 2008
• Encore Symposium (for senior citizens) on Moby-Dick Rehearsed, 2008.
• Consulting Scholar for Professional Development for Secondary School Teachers in Roanoke Rapids, NC (Sponsored by National Humanities Center), 2005
• Invited Speaker at UNC “Adventures in Ideas” Weekend Seminar on “The Spirit of Adventure.” 2004
• Invited Speaker at North Carolina Museum of Art: Presentation on Literature and the Hudson River School of Painters, 2004
• Consulting Scholar for Professional Development Seminar for Secondary School School Teachers in Lee County (Sponsored by the National Humanities Center), 2003.
• Invited Speaker at UNC “Adventures in Ideas” Weekend Seminar on “TheWorld of Herman Melville and Moby-Dick, 2001
• Invited Speaker at “The Spell of the Land Symposium,” Raleigh, NC, 2001“Poetry and the Environmental Imagination” Middle School Outreach Program, Reed College 2000

Office Hours

• Tue: 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Research Publications

Books

Work in Progress: A Cultural Biography of Susanna Rowson

Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

Articles

“Mapping Agency: Global Geography and Naturalism in Willa Cather’s One of Ours,” Geohumanities Vol. 2, No. 1 (2016):119-131.

“Tempestuous Passages: Storms, Revolution, and the Status of Women in the Fiction of Susanna Rowson,” Studies in American Fiction, 2012 Spring-Fall; 38 (1-2): 205-221.

“’Terrible Women’: Gender, Platonism, and Christianity in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.  Western American Literature, 45.3 (Fall 2010): 253-72.

“What to Israel Potter is the Fourth of July: Melville, Douglass, and the Agency of Words.” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2008): 1-14

“Word, Image, and National Geography: Panorama Pamphlets and Manifest Destiny.”   American Literary Geographies: Space and Cultural Production, 1588-1888, ed. Hsuan Hsu and Martin Brueckner (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007): 89-108.

“Mapping and Measurement in Moby-Dick.” Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick, ed. John Bryant, Mary K. Bercaw, and Timothy Marr (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006): 182-196

“Geography, Pedagogy, and Race: Schoolbooks and Ideology in the Antebellum United States.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 113.1 (2003):163-190

“American Agoraphobia: Moby-Dick and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Size,” in Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture, ed. Nancy L. Schultz (Lafayette, IN: Purdue Univ. Press, 1999): 191-202.

“‘A Commanding View’: Vision and the Problem of Nationality in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes,” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 44 .1-2 (1998): 61-77.

BOOK REVIEWS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES

Review of Marian Rust, Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women, Research in American Literary Studies, Vol. 33 (March, 2010), 290-293.

Review of Leonard Tennenhouse, The Importance of Feeling English: American Literature and the British Diaspora, 1750-1850. In-between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 15:2 (September 2006), 167-170.

Review of Bruce Harvey, American Geographics: U.S. National Narratives and the Representation of the Non-European World, 1830-1865, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 8:1 (March 2006), 96-98.

“Transcendentalist Writers” in The Encyclopedia of New England.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Review of Jimmie Killingsworth, Walt Whitman and the Earth. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 12.2 (Summer 2005).

“Margaret Fuller,” in Writers of the American Renaissance: An A-Z Guide. Ed. Denise D. Knight. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Review of Cecelia Tichi, Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Places, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 9.2 (Summer 2002): 262-263.

Review of Dorothee E. Kocks, Dream a Little: Land and Social Justice in Modern America, CLIO 31.2 (Winter 2002): 221-227.

“Omeros” in Encyclopedia of American Poetry: the Twentieth Century.  Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001.

Review of Larzer Ziff, Writing in the New Nation: Prose, Print, and Politics in the Early United States, Amerikastudien 40 (Summer, 1995).

Presentations

“Mapping Agency: The Geography of Naturalism in One of Ours.” International Cather Seminar, Northampton, MA, 2011.

“Geography and Naturalism in Cather’s One of Ours,” Louisville Conference on Language and Literature since 1900. Louisville, KY, 2011

“Tempestuous Passages: Storms and the Status of Women in the Fiction of Susanna Rowson,” Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Philadelphia, PA, 2009.

“Tempestuous Passages: Storms in the Fiction of Susanna Rowson” Society of Early Americanists Conference. Bermuda, 2009.

“Breathing at Blithedale: Air Quality, Sanitary Reform, and Hawthorne’s Utopian Romance” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, Spartanburg, SC, 2007.

“The Blithedale Romance and the Transatlantic Discourse of Disease.” Transatlanticism in American Literature: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe. Oxford, UK, 2006

“Fremont, the West, and Thoreau’s Transcendental Geography,” Modern Language Association Convention, Washington, D.C., 2005.

“Regional Anxiety and the Compact Nation,” American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 2005

“What to Israel Potter is the Fourth of July: Melville, Douglass, Agency, and History,” International Melville and Douglass Conference, New Bedford, MA, 2005.

“Panoramas and National Narratives.”  Invited Lecture for Duke Americanist Speaker Series, Durham, NC, 2005

“River Panoramas and National Narratives.” Southern American Studies Association. Baton Rouge, LA, 2005.

“Herman Melville’s South Seas Adventures.” Invited Lecture at UNC “Adventures in Ideas” Weekend Seminar, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2004

“Imagining the American Landscape: Literature and the Hudson River School.” Invited Lecture at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC 2004.

“Gender, History, and Economics in The Souls of Black Folk.” Modern Language Association Convention. San Diego, CA, 2003.

“Word, Image, and Manifest Destiny: Print Culture and Popular Art in the Antebellum U.S.” American Studies Association. Hartford, CT, 2003.

“’Terrible Women’: Gender, Platonism, and Religion in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Fort Worth, TX, 2003.

“Pacific Culture and the Ironization of Vision in Melville’s Typee” Melville and the Pacific.  Lahaina, HI, 2003.

“National Maps and Thoreau’s Local Geography.” American Studies Association.  Houston, TX, 2002.

Invited Speaker for UNC “Adventures in Ideas” Weekend Seminar. “Size Matters: Melville and National Expansion.”  UNC-Chapel Hill, 2002.

“Nation, Measurement, and Apocalypse in ‘A Bower in the Arsacides’.”  Moby-Dick 2001.  Hofstra, NY, 2001.

“Geography, Pedagogy, and Race: Schoolbooks and Ideology in the Antebellum United States.” American Studies Association.  Detroit, MI, 2000.

“Secularization and the Value of Nature.” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. London, UK, 2000.

Geography Schoolbooks and the Construction of Race in Antebellum New England.” New England American Studies Association. Portland, ME, 2000.

“Postcards from the Edge: American Vision in the Cinematic Contact Zone.” (Panel Chair and Commentator) American Studies Association.  Montreal, Canada, 1999.

“‘The Prince of Darkness Was His Surveyor’: Measuring Nature in Fremont and Thoreau.” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.  Kalamazoo, MI, 1999.

“‘A Connected and Accurate View of Our Continent’: Fremont’s Exploration Narratives and the Assimilation of the West.”  Western Literature Association/Canadian American Studies Association.  Banff, Canada, 1998.

“American Agoraphobia: Moby-Dick  and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Size.” New England American Studies Association. Salem, MA 1997.

“Voodoo Economics: Magic, Storytelling, and Value in Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman.” Midwest Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, MN, 1996.

“Nation and Nationality in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes.” New England American Studies Association.  Wellesley, MA, 1995.

“Looking at the West: the Act of Seeing in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes.”  From the Frontier to La Frontera: American Women/American Landscapes.  Brooklyn, NY, 1995.

Funded Research

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia, Summer 2006

Keck Fellowship, Huntington Library, Summer 2003

Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Summer 2002

Stephen Botein Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Summer 1999

Area(s) of Expertise

American literature and culture, the history of ideas, literature and the environment, gender studies, transatlantic literary relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.