Jeffrey Lawrence

Jeffrey Lawrence is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century American literature and culture, alongside Latin American/Hemispheric Studies. His research bridges comparative literary theory and social movement analysis, emphasizing how cultural production intersects with political and historical contexts. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University (2014) and a BA in Spanish from Amherst College (2007).

His first monograph, Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño (Oxford, 2018), redefines hemispheric literary divides by contrasting U.S. 'literature of experience' with Latin America's 'literature of the reader.' Current projects include Culture in Movement, linking post-1945 U.S. literature to social movements like Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter.

Publications appear in American Literary History, Twentieth-Century Literature, and El Roommate, alongside translations such as Andrés Neuman’s How to Travel Without Seeing (2016). Awards include the 2013/4 Inter-American Studies Dissertation Prize and a Princeton Fellowship.

Teaching focuses on postmodernism, social movements in literature, and transnational authors like Roberto Bolaño. He co-founded the literary blog El Roommate and maintains affiliations with the Modern Language Association and Society for U.S. Intellectual History.