Bert Emerson

Bert Emerson is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Whitworth University since 2016. His research focuses on late 18th- and 19th-century American literature, emphasizing literary aesthetics, democratic theories, regionalism, and material book history. He holds a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, an M.A. from California State University, Long Beach, and a B.A. from the University of the South.

His current project, Local Rules: Misfit American Literature and its Alternative Democracies, 1828-1861, examines marginalized texts that challenge national literary narratives. Emerson has published in Nineteenth-Century Literature, ESQ, and American Literature, with work analyzing George Lippard, John Pendleton Kennedy, and Old Southwest humorists.

Awards include fellowships from The Huntington Library, The Bancroft Library, and The Library Company of Philadelphia. His teaching emphasizes democratic engagement through courses like Democracy and the American Novel and Colonial American Literature.