Faculty Research Profile
Scott Michaelsen
Scott Michaelsen is currently an associate professor of English. His research and teaching interests are wide-ranging and eclectic: American literature (his Ph.D. dissertation was on Mark Twain), the literatures of the Americas, popular culture (science fiction, film), and philosophy and theory in its relation to literature and society. He has special expertise in matters of political and legal theory, postcolonial theory, and globalization studies. He has published critical essays and books on topics as diverse as American Puritan literature, James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, the rise of anthropology as a discipline, and the after-effects of 9/11.
Scott’s book-length publications include Anthropology’s Wake: Attending to the End of Cultural Analysis (Fordham University Press, 2008, co-written with David E. Johnson, Comparative Literature, SUNY at Buffalo), The Limits of Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Origins of American Anthropology (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), and Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 1997, co-edited with Johnson).
In the last several years, Scott has worked collaboratively with David E. Johnson (see above) on cultural analysis and with Scott Cutler Shershow (English, University of California–Davis) on legal theory after 9/11. He has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2001, he won the prestigious Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement, given by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, for his co-editing (with Johnson) of CR: The New Centennial Review. Since 2000, CR has become one of the premiere journals focused on interdisciplinary research into the Americas and the United States’ relationship to the world. In 2005, he received the Rosenberg Teaching Award from the Department of English at MSU.
Scott’s mélange of interests, incisive critical acumen, political engagement, and abiding passion for rigorous thinking suggest the ways in which the Department of English has retained a foothold in traditional ways of doing business, even as it explores the limits and boundaries of doing “English.”
