A key figure in the English department at Colgate University, Associate Professor Ben Child teaches a multitude of courses while working on literary productions and interpretations of U.S. populism.
Child’s main focus is in American literature. He teaches courses such as American Texts and Contexts; Plant, Animal, Mineral: American Literature and Extractive Industry; William Faulkner; Yoknapatawpha Fictions (1929-42) and Fugitive Mobilities: Migration and Environment in American Literature. These courses stem from his past and current research interests.
His past research was quite regionally specific, focusing on late 19th century literature that came out of the South, while his most recent research takes in the same time period with more of a political bent. Child is currently focused on looking at populism — the type that characterized specific decades in the 1800s — and the populist party on the whole as both a literary and a cultural dimension.
“There are other ways in which I think of populism as a kind of ethos, as a sensibility, and influences a lot of the literature,” Child said. “There is some stuff about Mark Twain in there, a very important writer in populism, Hamlin Garland. It’s trying to take up a lot of different positions in relation to this question. A political movement that is committed to representing the interests of the people. It’s a complicated question. Who counts as the people?”
Child has published many pieces, ranging from discussions on film and music, such as his piece on Bob Dylan’s “Love and Theft” in 2009, to more recent publications on topics such as Faulkner’s “Americanity,” Johnson’s “My Monticello” and the Wilmington Massacre.
His book, “The Whole Machinery: The Rural Modern in Cultures of the U.S. South, 1890-1946,” which was published as a part of the University of Georgia Press’s New Southern Studies Series in 2019, summarizes much of his research on the role of national and transnational exchange, emergent technologies and how industrialization affected the South and its ideas of rurality and modernity.
Child’s research is incorporated into his classes through readings, such as Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” and through discussions focused on American literature and environmental studies. As the University Professor for CORE Conversations, he is quite involved with the literature selections on campus and helps shape the future of this course.
Colgate has offered Child the opportunity to combine the literature that he is interested in with his passion for teaching students in discussion-based courses. Child bridges environmental studies and American literature in his teaching, encouraging students to look beyond the plot to the impact of these novels on current conversation.
“I really do love teaching. These are the two roles that I got into business to do. Write research and to teach, so to have a place like Colgate where both of those sides of my identity as a professor are really valued and are an important part of the job. Good teachers are always trying to learn from their students,” Child said. “I totally believe that it is within the power of every student to say something new that has never been said about a novel.”
