Office: 364 EPB
Phone: 319-335-2365
E-Mail: Matthew-P-Brown@uiowa.edu

• Curriculum Vitae
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Early American Literature
& Book Studies

I hold a joint appointment with the Center for the Book, where I am also currently Director. Offering a graduate Certificate, the Center combines the study of book history with the production of book art. My particular research interest is in the history of readership, as reflected in my book The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). The Pilgrim and the Bee coordinates book studies with performance theory to rethink the literary history of early America. More information about the book is available here. I am working on a second book, The Novel and the Blank, an investigation of how the constraints of the print shop affected the literary culture and reading habits of colonial and early national America. With an NEH grant to support research for the book at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I will be on leave during the academic year 2008-09. The Center will host in January 2009 the CBAA conference “Art, Fact, and Artifact: The Book in Time and Place,” which I am helping organize. Along with book studies and early American literature, current teaching and scholarly interests include cultural studies and theory, gender studies, reader-oriented criticism, visual culture, and media studies.

Here I am against a backdrop of scrolling interfaces and book interfaces—er, I mean, tapes and cds. The other fetishes—the vinyl and the iPod—are beyond the frame.