Jennifer J. Baker

Jennifer J. Baker is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at New York University's College of Arts and Science. Holding a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (2000), her academic focus spans 18th- and 19th-century American literary, cultural, and intellectual history. Key research areas include literature and science, environmental literature, transatlantic Romanticism, and Civil War literature. She is currently working on a reception history of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, examining its rise to canonical status through Cold War politics and academic culture.

• Education: Ph.D. in English, University of Pennsylvania (2000)

Her upcoming book American Romanticism and the Evolutionary Idea (Stanford UP, 2026) investigates how evolutionary theories intersected with Romantic concepts in 19th-century American literature. Previous publications include Securing the Commonwealth: Debt, Speculation, and Writing in the Making of Early America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2006).

Recent research includes articles on Herman Melville, Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Judith Sargent Murray, reflecting her interdisciplinary approach combining literary analysis with financial history, scientific thought, and cultural studies.

• Faculty Fellowship, NYU Center for the Humanities (2014-15)
• Heyman Prize, Yale University (2004)
• Morse Fellowship, Yale University (2005)
• Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (1997-98)

She serves on the Board of the Melville Society Cultural Project and has held academic appointments at Yale University and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.