Lecturers at the Jefferson Educational Society

The Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English and American Studies at Vanderbilt University and Chair of the Department of English, Dr. Nelson is author of four books, The Word in Black and White:  Reading ‘Race’ in American Literature, 1638-1867, National Manhood:  Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men, Bad For Democracy:  How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People, and Commons Democracy:  Reading the Politics of Participation in the Early United States. Along with dozens of articles and reviews, she has coedited a collection of essays, Materializing Democracy:  Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics with Russ Castronovo, and a special issue of the journal American Literature, on “Violence, The Body and ‘The South’” with her Vanderbilt colleague Houston Baker. Her current project, “Change on the Range,” studies recent public/private land controversies in the American West.