Bruce Burgett
Professor
B.A. English, University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. English, University of California, Berkeley
Email: burgett@uw.edu
Mailing Box: 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246
Teaching
I believe that lively teaching requires lively research, and that both need to be tied closely to complex problems that arise in everyday life. In order to maximize the interplay between these activities, I dedicate time in the classroom to teaching students how they think about the world as researchers. To do this, I stage classroom experiences that enable us to engage with the materials at hand, while also modeling ways of understanding our relationship to those materials not simply as passive consumers of pre-packaged information, but as creators of new knowledge for ourselves, for our fellow students, and for the various worlds that we inhabit in other aspects of our lives. All of my classes ask and enable students to engage actively and critically with course materials in a variety of interdisciplinary contexts.
In addition to teaching in IAS and at UW Bothell, I am adjunct faculty in the English Department at UW Seattle where I teach occasional graduate courses and supervise doctoral work. I also work with UW graduate students through the UW鈥檚 graduate , which I helped to found.
Recent Courses Taught
BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry; or, Knowledge Travels
BIS 367 Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity
BIS 368 Sex, Love, Romance
BIS 370 Nineteenth-Century American Literature
BIS 470 Art, Politics, and Social Change: Critical Theories of Public Culture
BIS 490 Senior Seminar: Intersections of Sex and Race
BIS 495 Internship Worlds of Work
BIS 499 Portfolio Capstone
BCULST 500 Formations of Cultural Studies
BCULST/BPOLST 591 Graduate Research Colloquium
HUM 594 Scholarship as Public Practice
Research/Scholarship
My research interests fall into several broad categories: American studies, cultural studies, queer studies, critical race studies, and interdisciplinary and public scholarship. My first book, Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic (Princeton UP), focused on the intersection of these fields in the specific context of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century United States. In 2007, I co-edited (with Glenn Hendler) Keywords for American Cultural Studies(NYU Press) and co-developed an interactive website that extends its inquiries: . A second, expanded edition of the book and website appeared in 2014, and a third edition is scheduled to appear in 2020. At the UW, I have co-directed or developed a number of collaborations and lecture series: 鈥淭hinking Sex in Transnational Times鈥� in 2002-2003 (with Chandan Reddy); 鈥淧lacing the Humanities: New Locations, New Meanings鈥� in 2004-2005 and the 鈥淐ultural Studies Praxis Collective鈥� in 2005-2008 (with Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren); the Simpson Center for the Humanities鈥� week-long 鈥淚nstitute in the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students in 2005-2009 and 鈥淧latforms for Public Scholarship鈥� in 2009-2010 (with Miriam Bartha); and the 鈥淧roject for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy鈥� beginning in 2004 (with Martha Groom and David Goldstein) beginning in 2004. I serve on the Press Committee of the University of Washington Press, and have co-directed the UW graduate .
Beyond the UW, I serve or have served on the advisory and editorial boards of three journals, American Quarterly, American Literary History, and Lateral: A Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. I am the Past President of the , the Past Chair of the National Advisory Board of , and serves on the Board of Trustees of , the humanities council for Washington State.
Selected Publications
- Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York: NYU Press, 2007 and 2014.
- Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.
- 鈥淲hy Public Scholarship Matters for Graduate Education鈥� (co-authored with Miriam Bartha), Pedagogy, 15, 1 (January 2015), 31-43.
- 鈥淎rt Gave Permission to Agitate鈥� (with Miriam Bartha, Pam Korza, and Elizabeth Thomas), Public: A Journal of Imagining America (Autumn 2013).
- 鈥淐ritical Purchase in Neoliberal Times鈥� (with Ien Ang, Miriam Bartha, Ron Krabill), Lateral: A Journal of the Cultural Studies Association (Spring 2013).
- 鈥淭he Affirmative Character of Cultural Studies,鈥� International Journal of Cultural Studies (forthcoming 鈥� available on-line before print, October 2011).
- 鈥淟ateral Moves 鈥� Across Disciplines,鈥� Lateral: A Journal of the Cultural Studies Association (Spring 2012).
- 鈥淭eaching Interdisciplinarity,鈥� Pedagogy, 11.3 (2011), 465-491.
- 鈥淪ex, Panic, Nation,鈥� American Literary History (2009), 1-20.
- 鈥淭he History of x in Early America,鈥� Early American Literature (2009), 215-225.
- “On the Mormon Question: Race, Sex, and Polygamy in the U.S. 1850s and 1990s,” American Quarterly, 57, 1 (March 2005), 75-102.
- “The Heart of Civilization, Journal of British and American Studies, 10 (2004).
- “Between Speculation and Population: The Problem of ‘Sex’ in Our Long Eighteenth Century” Early American Literature (special issue on “Interiority”), 37, 1 (2002).