People

Faculty Profiles

  • Brad Evans
  • Brad Evans
  • Chair of the English Department
  • Professor of English
  • Unit: Chair's Office
  • At Rutgers Since: 1999
  • EVANS_CV_5-30-25.pdf
  • Office: Murray Hall, Room 105
  • Office Hours:

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  • Primary Areas of Specialization: Nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, the history of anthropology, periodical studies, and documentary film. Topics of current interest include pragmatism, the American short-story, and relational aesthetics.
  • Field of Interest: Book and Media History, Nineteenth-Century American, Pedagogy, Twentieth Century
  • About:

     Brad Evans is a specialist in 19th and 20th century American literature. He is the author of two books, Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature (2005) and Ephemeral Bibelots: How an International Fad Buried American Modernism (2019). He co-produced the restoration of In the Land of the Head Hunters, a 1914 silent feature film directed by the photographer Edward Curtis and starring an all-indigenous cast from the Kwakwaka’wakw community of British Columbia, Canada. The film is now listed in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. He has for many years led the Pragmatism Working Group at the Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis. He is currently working on two projects. The first, tentatively titled Missed Connections: “Relational Aesthetics” from Henry James to Felix Gonzales Torres, considers the various ways that artists since the 1850s have taken up the remarkably difficult challenge of representing relations. The other is a book on chewing gum. 

     
  • Book(s):
    "Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920 " by Brad Evans
    Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920
    "Ephemeral Bibelots: How an International Fad Buried American Modernism" by Brad Evans
    Ephemeral Bibelots: How an International Fad Buried American Modernism
    "Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, The kwakwaka'wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema" by Brad Evans
    Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, The kwakwaka'wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema
  • Undergraduate Courses Taught:
    •  American Literature Survey 1865-Present
    • Principles of Literary Study, Fiction
    • 19th Century American Literature
    • 19th Century Black Literature
    • American Realism and Naturalism
    • Early 20th Century American Literature
    • The Short Story
    • The Cultural History of Now: Inequality, The New Gilded Age?
    • English Honors Thesis Proseminar
    • Science and Literature: Writing Forests
    • Seminar: American Vernacular
    • Seminar: Black Writing at the Fin de Siècle
    • Seminar: Henry James
    • Seminar: Henry James, Edith Wharton and the Ends of Realism
    • SAS Honors Interdisciplinary Seminar: What is Culture?
    • Byrne Seminar: The Paris Art Scene in 1900, Reading The Ambassadors
    • Byrne Seminar: Restoring A Silent Film
    • Byrne Seminar: What is Culture?
    • Byrne Seminar: The Fault in Our Fiction: John Green and Literary Criticism Today

     
  • Graduate Courses Taught:
    • Anthropology and American Literature
    • Foundations of Science Studies
    • Relational Aesthetics and American Literature
    • Franz Boas v. William James: Pluralism at the Turn of the Century
    • Circulation and Cultural Theory
    • Post-Bellum/Pre-Harlem
    • Locating American Realism
    • Local Color
    • An Infidelity to Realism
    • American Literature 1860-1925
    • From Balzac to Noguchi: American Literature 1860-1910
    • Henry James, Edith Wharton, and the Ends of Realism

     
  • Awards:
    • ACLS Fellowship, 2012-2013
    • Rutgers Center For Historical Analysis, Faculty Fellow, 2006-2007
    • Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, Teaching Fellow, 2006-2007
    • Andrew W. Mellon Time-Release Grant Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, Spring 2004

     
  • Other Publications:

    Recent Essays:

    • “The Short Story Fad: Gender, Pleasure, and Commodity Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Magazines,” in ed. Michael J. Collins and Gavin Jones, The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (2023), 46-61.
    • “Realism as Modernism,” in ed. Keith Newlin, The Oxford Handbook of American Realism (2019), 139- 164.
    • “What Travels? The Movement of Movements; or, Ephemeral Bibelots from Paris to Lansing, with Love,” in eds. James J. Connolly, Patrick Collier, Frank Felsenstein, Kenneth R. Hall, and Robert G. Hall, Print Culture Histories Beyond the Metropolis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 181- 214.
    • “Relating in Henry James (The Artwork of Networks),” The Henry James Review 36:1 (Winter 2015) 1- 23. Also printed in Henry James Today, ed. John Carlos Rowe (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) 7-40.

     

    Co-Authored Essays:

    • With Aaron Glass and Colin Browne, “ ‘Ethnology as an Epic’: The Modern Cinema of Edward S. Curtis that the Kwakwaka’wakw,” Getty Research Journal 16 (2022) 67-90.
    • With Aaron Glass, “Introduction. Edward Curtis Meets the Kwakwaka’wakw: Cultural Encounter and Indigenous Agency In the Land of The Head Hunters,” in eds. Evans and Glass, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters (Univ. of Washington Press, 2014) 3-41.
    • With Aaron Glass, “Consuming the Head Hunters: A Century of Film Reception,” in eds. Evans and Glass, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters (Univ. of Washington Press, 2014) 146-166.
    • With Colin Browne and Aaron Glass, “In the Land of the Head Hunters: In Situ, In Tempo,” in ed. Thierry Lounas, Cappricci 2013 (Paris: Capprici, SARL, 2013) 6-15.

     

    Online Publications:

     
  • Membership Affiliations:
    • Executive Committee, Division of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century American Literature, Modern Languages Association (elected term 2010-2015; 2025-2030)
    • Board of Advisors, The Modernist Journals Project (dl.lib.brown.edu/mjp)
    • Executive Committee, Division on Anthropological Approaches to Literature, Modern Languages Association (elected term, 2001-2005; 2025-2029)
    • Member, American Anthropological Association
    • Member, American Studies Association
    • Member, Modern Languages Association

     
  • Other Information of Interest:

     
  • Education: PhD, University of Chicago BA, University of Cincinnati