William Cain

William Cain is the Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, specializing in 19th and early 20th century American literature, Shakespeare, and modernism in the arts. His scholarly interests also include African American literature, slavery and abolition, and literary theory and criticism.

• Education:
  • B.A., Tufts University
  • M.A. and Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

Professor Cain has authored a monograph on American literary and cultural criticism (1900–1945) in The Cambridge History of American Literature and co-edited the Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. He has collaborated on books and anthologies of American literature, with recent essays focusing on figures like Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Rothko.