Alan Bewell

Alan Bewell is a Professor of English at the University of Toronto, specializing in British Romanticism. His research intersects with colonialism, postcolonial theory, ecology, environmental history, and the intersections of science, medicine, and literature.

His scholarly work explores how British colonialism shaped ecological and literary discourses in the late 18th and 19th centuries. He has authored influential monographs such as Wordsworth and the Enlightenment (1989), Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999), and the forthcoming Natures in Translation: Romanticism and Colonial Natural History (2016).

Bewell’s research has been recognized with prestigious awards, including:

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• Guggenheim Fellow
• Northrop Frye Award (University of Toronto)
• Keats-Shelley Association Prize (1992)

He has received research grants from SSHRC and contributes to academic discourse as a member of editorial boards for Studies in Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and the Palgrave series The Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Cultures of Print. His current project, Romanticism and Mobility, examines how Romantic-era writers responded to global movement of people, objects, and ideas.