literary critic
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
, biographer, and
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
who has written about American literature and culture. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, on the
Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
era—including figures such as
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...
,
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
,
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associat ...
,
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...
,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...
,
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon sim ...
,
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
,
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas.
It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, d ...
, the Lincoln Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Book Award, the John Hope Franklin Prize (Honorable Mention), and was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Providence, Rhode Island, on August 30, 1948, and was raised nearby in Barrington, located near
Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. S ...
. He attended the
Moses Brown School
Moses Brown School is an independent, Quaker, college preparatory school, currently with 774 students, located in Providence, Rhode Island,offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. Founded in 1784 by Moses Brown, a Quaker ab ...
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...
, where he received a B.A. in 1970.
After teaching high school English at the Providence Country Day School for a year, he pursued his graduate studies in American literature and American Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1979.
Teaching career
Reynolds has taught
American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...
and
American Studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, History of the United States, history, Society of the United States, society, and Culture of the Unit ...
at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
,
Barnard College
Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...
,
Rutgers University-Camden
Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was affi ...
,
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
,
Baruch College
Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City, United States. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the colle ...
, and the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III. Since 2006, he has been a Distinguished Professor at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and postgraduate university in New York City. Formed in 1961 as Division of Graduate Studies at City University ...
.
Writings and influence
Cultural Biography
Reynolds is a proponent of cultural biography, contextualizing historical figures in their era. He was influenced by the " representative men" theory of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who writes, "the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it… We learn of our contemporaries what they know without effort, and almost through the pores of our skin." In ''Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times'' Reynolds challenges the usual view of Lincoln as the quintessential self-made man who arose, without education or guidance, from a crude background and a barren American culture that offered few nurturing materials. Instead, Reynolds shows, Lincoln learned a lot from a rich, teeming cultural environment that he absorbed and rechanneled in his brilliant presidency and his immortal speeches. Reynolds argues in ''John Brown, Abolitionist'' that Brown was not an isolated, crazed antislavery terrorist but rather an amalgam of social currents—religious, racial, reformist, political—that found explosive realization in him. In ''Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography'', Reynolds takes seriously Whitman's declarations that he was "the age transfigured" and that "in estimating my volumes, the world's current times and deeds, and their spirit, must first be profoundly estimated." Reynolds writes that Whitman's growing alarm over political controversies, corruption, and class division led him to try to heal his nation through his poetry, which absorbed images from many aspects of social and cultural life, including religion, science, city life, theater, oratory, photography, painting, reform movements, and sexual mores.
American history
Reynolds highlights the intersection of politics and culture consistent with Abraham Lincoln's view that "public sentiment is everything... he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions." In books like ''John Brown: Abolitionist'', ''Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America'', and ''Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson'', Reynolds tells the story of political and social leaders, artists, musicians, reformers, scientists, artists, ministers, and self-styled religious prophets who shaped American history. In ''Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America'', he traces the impact of
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
's 1852 best-seller
Uncle Tom's Cabin
''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans ...
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, and worldwide events, including the end of serfdom in Russia, down to its influence on race relations and popular culture in the twentieth century.
Literary criticism
Reynolds challenges the once-prevalent view—introduced by the
New Critics
New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned a ...
and later promoted by the deconstructionists and other theorists—that literature is divorced from the author's life and contexts. His reconstruction of the cultural and social contexts of literature began with his book ''Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America'', which explores some 250 writers from Puritan times through the late 19th century. In ''Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville'', Reynolds leverages the title of F.O. Matthiessen's best known work and expands his thesis. Here Reynolds combines elements of New Historicism and
cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...
with archival research to show that great literature is characterized by its radical openness to biographical, political, social, and cultural images, which certain responsive writers adopted and transformed, yielding such symbols as Melville's white whale, Hawthorne's scarlet letter, Poe's raven, and Whitman's grass leaves. Contesting the standard interpretation of America's great writers as marginal figures in a sentimental, proper society, Reynolds reveals that they were instead immersed in a culture that was frequently sensational, subversive, or erotic, epitomized by popular novels about city mysteries, such as the lurid best-seller '' The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall'' by the Philadelphia writer George Lippard (the subject of two other booksDavid S. Reynolds, ''George Lippard'' (Boston: Twayne, 1982) and ''George Lippard, Prophet of Protest: Writings of an American Radical, 1822–1854'' (New York: Peter Lang, 1986) by Reynolds).
Family
Reynolds's wife, whose professional name is Suzanne Nalbantian, is a professor of Comparative Literature at Long Island University and specializes in the interdisciplinary relationship between literature and neuroscience. Her eight books include ''Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience,'' ''The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives'' (coedited with Paul M. Matthews and James B. McClelland), ''Aesthetic Autobiography: From Life to Art in the Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin,'' and ''Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal'' (coedited with Paul M. Matthews).
Awards and honors
*
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas.
It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, d ...
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Phi Beta Kappa Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
), for ''Beneath the American Renaissance''
*Gustavus Myers Book Award, for ''John Brown, Abolitionist''
* Kansas Notable Book, for ''John Brown, Abolitionist''
*Notable Books of the Year, ''The New York Times Book Review'', for ''Beneath the American Renaissance'', ''Walt Whitman's America'', and ''Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson''
*Best Books of the Year, ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', for ''Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson'' and ''Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times''
*A ''
New Yorker
New Yorker may refer to:
* A resident of New York:
** A resident of New York City and its suburbs
*** List of people from New York City
** A resident of the New York (state), State of New York
*** Demographics of New York (state)
* ''The New Yor ...
'' Favorite Book of the Year, for ''Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America''
*Best Books of the Year, ''
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...
'', for ''Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America'' and ''Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times''
*Best Books of the Year, ''Christian Science Monitor'', for Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times '
*John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, Honorable Mention, American Studies Association, for ''Beneath the American Renaissance''
*
Who's Who in America
Marquis Who's Who, also known as A.N. Marquis Company ( or ), is an American publisher of a number of directories containing short biographies. The books usually are entitled ''Who's Who in...'' followed by some subject, such as ''Who's Who in A ...
(2000 edition to the present), Who's Who in the World (2000 edition to the present)
*Selected as Honorary Co-chair of the
New-York Historical Society
The New York Historical (known as the New-York Historical Society from 1804 to 2024) is an American history museum and library on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. It ...
, 2009–present
*Fellow, Society of American Historians (honorary elected position), 1997–present
*Fellow,
American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...
*''Lincoln's Selected Writings: A Norton Critical Edition''.
*''Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly'' he Splendid Edition/nowiki>, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
*''A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman''.
*''Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, 150th Anniversary Edition''.
*''George Lippard, Prophet of Protest: Writings of an American Radical, 1822–1854''.
*''The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall, by George Lippard''.
*''Venus in Boston and Other Tales of 19th Century City Life'', by George Thompson (coedited with Kimberly Gladman).
*''The Serpent in the Cup: Temperance in American Literature'' (coedited with Debra J. Rosenthal).
Book about David S. Reynolds
*''Above the American Renaissance: David S. Reynolds and the Spiritual Imagination in American Literary Studies''. Edited by Harold K. Bush and Brian Yothers.