John Brewer is the Eli and Edye Broad Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of History and Literature at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He has taught at Yale, Harvard, UCLA, The European Institute University in Florence, and Chicago. He is the author and editor of many major books that have blazed innovative trails across the political, social, and cultural history of eighteenth-century England, ranging in focus from popular politics to the rise of consumerism, from the formation of the fiscal-military state to Georgian literature, painting, theater, and music. His most recent books include The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997), winner of the Wolfson Prize in History, and A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century (2004).

For many years, Rutgers University has been home to numerous distinguished scholars in various disciplines working on the history, literature, culture, and politics of the British Isles and Britain's former colonies. Over the past year, a group of faculty in English and History have planned a working group in British studies, the Rutgers British Studies Project, which will provide an umbrella under which the University’s resources can be imaginatively organized and integrated so as to fulfill Rutgers’ status as one of the pre-eminent national centers of teaching and research in British culture, past and present. The interests of the Rutgers British Studies Project cover a broad chronological range, from the medieval period to contemporary culture, and include comparative, transnational, imperial, post-colonial, and feminist approaches. Our wide-ranging scholarly commitments ensure that British studies at Rutgers is closely linked to larger issues of empire, colonization, and decolonization while positioning us to contribute to urgent debates about the meaning of and struggles within our contemporary post-colonial world.

Rutgers British Studies Project Faculty Committee:

Alastair Bellany (History), Ann Baynes Coiro (English), Seth Koven (History), John Kucich (English), and Michael McKeon (English)

Department of English

Department of History

School of Arts and Sciences

Center for Cultural Analysis

Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs