Jacob Risinger

Jacob Risinger is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at The Ohio State University. His research bridges Romanticism, eighteenth-century literature and philosophy, and transatlantic studies, with a focus on Stoicism’s influence on literary creativity. He directs the Wordsworth Circle and co-edits Literature Compass’s Nineteenth Century Networks section. Risinger holds a PhD from Harvard University (2014), an MSt from Oxford (2007), and a BA from Middlebury College (2006).

Key research focuses include the ethics of emotion in Romanticism, the evolution of 'power' as an aesthetic concept during the Industrial Revolution, and the transatlantic afterlife of Romanticism. His book Stoic Romanticism and the Ethics of Emotion (2021) reinterprets Stoicism’s role in shaping Romantic creativity. Current projects explore literary influence’s ethical dimensions and American Romanticism’s untimely legacy.

Teaching awards include the university’s highest honor, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching (2022), and the English Department’s Undergraduate Professor of the Year (2017). He designs interdisciplinary courses like Ecopoetics: From the Enlightenment to the End of Nature and graduate seminars on Romanticism and critique.

Risinger has received grants as a Global Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellow (2021) and has authored over 15 articles, including seminal works on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Emerson. His work appears in ELH, SEL, and European Romantic Review.