Ross Posnock

Ross Posnock is the Anna S. Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, affiliated with the Department of English within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His career includes prior roles as Andrew Hilen Professor of American Literature at the University of Washington and Professor of English at New York University (2000–2004). He holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Posnock's research spans 19th- and 20th-century US and European literature, intellectual history, pragmatism, and postwar visual and literary culture. Key focus areas include Henry James, William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and modernist aesthetics. His current project explores American sophistication and the cultural fear of art in the 1920s, 1950s, and contemporary contexts.

• Editorial Roles: Series editor for Cambridge University Press Studies in American Literature and Culture (1998–2017), contributing editor for Raritan and American Literary History.

His work has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009), and prestigious recognitions for Renunciation (2016), including the TLS Book of the Year and Choice Outstanding Academic Title.