Portrait image of Brian Reed
Brian Reed

Chair, Department of English; Professor

Contact Information

OFFICE: Preston 215
PHONE: 814-824-3347

Currently the chair of the Department of English, Professor Reed is particularly fascinated by the strange dichotomies of order and chaos in eighteenth-century British literature. He regularly ponders the construction of widely held conceptions (or misconceptions) of gender and race, the impact of privilege on writing, and the role of writing in either reinforcing or challenging the values of a particular culture. His interests include British travel writers, masculinity studies, the Restoration and Eighteenth-Century, and African-American literature. He has published on Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and Richard Wright.

About Professor Reed
    • Ph.D. - Case Western Reserve University, English Literature, 2001
    • M.A. - Youngstown State University, English Literature, 1995
    • B.A. - Wittenberg University, English, 1982
    • Composition
    • World Literature and Culture
    •  Irish Literature
    •  British Literature
    •  The Novel
    •  Masculinity Studies
    •  Film Studies
    • COMP 120: Research and Writing
    • ENG 140: Western Classics
    • ENG 144: World Literature
    • ENG 150: British Classics
    • ENG 200: Jane Austen on Film
    • ENG 205: Introduction to the English Major
    • ENG 224: English Renaissance
    • ENG 228: Restoration and 18th Century
    • ENG 238: British/Irish Modernism
    • ENG 330: The English Drama
    • ENG 332: The English Novel
    • ENG 338: Literary Hitchcock
    • ENG 370: African-American Literature
    • ENG 490: Senior English Project             
    • Masculinity in fiction
    • Class, race, and gender in the long eighteenth century
    • Film adaptations and film theory
    • History of the novel and novel theory
    • “Stabilizing Reason with Sensibility: Boswell and Johnson’s Pursuit of a Genuine Definition of Masculinity.” Spectacle, Sex, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Ed. By Julie A. Chappel and Kamille Stone Stanton. New York: AMS Press, 2015. 117-137.
    • “Going, Going, Gone: Dickinson’s Subjective Move Towards the Invisible.” New Academia: An International Journal of English Literature and Literary Theory. 3.2 (2014): 1-8.
    • "Envisioning the Metaphysical Middle: A New Way of Seeing Probes the Heart of Middlemarch." Interactions: Aegean Journal of English and American Studies. 14.1  (2005): 211-220.