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Scott M. Reznick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh
Research
My research focuses on the way in which literature explores, imagines, and represents the moral experiences--and moral conflicts--that are central to democratic life. I am particularly interested in theories of political liberalism and the general question how individuals negotiate, both intellectually and affectively, the dual imperatives of living well and fulfilling the obligations that are owed to others. As a literature scholar, I'm particularly interested in the kinds of aesthetic frameworks that these dilemmas produce.
Books
Peer-Reviewed Articles
"Hawthorne, History, and Politics: A Reassessment," Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 78.1 (Spring 2022), 105-132 https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2022.0001
"'The Sense of Liberty': Rethinking Liberalism and Sentimentality in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Antislavery Novels," ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 65.4 (2019), 602-641 https://doi.org/10.1353/esq.2019.0017
"'Government and Manners': Cosmopolitanism and the 'Spirit' of Liberal Democracy in The Federalist and Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond," Early American Literature 54.1 (2019), 135-161. https://doi.org/10.1353/eal.2019.0008
"On Liberty and Union: Moral Imagination and Its Limits in Daniel Webster's Seventh of March Speech," American Political Thought 6.3 (Summer 2017), pp. 371-395 https://doi.org/10.1086/692572
Invited Essays
"Literature, Politics, and Reality: Revisiting the Dark and Bloody Crossroads," Forma de Vida No. 21 (Summer 2021)
Book Reviews
Review of Poetry Wars: Verse and Politics in the American Revolution and Early Republic, by Colin Wells, in Early American Literature 53.3 (2018), pp. 999-1004.
Review of The Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Mark Niemeyer, in Religion and the Arts 21.1-2 (2017), pp. 280-283.
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