Thomas W. Howard
I am an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Bilkent University, where I teach in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas. I earned my PhD in English & American Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. I specialize in nineteenth-century American and transatlantic literature, literature and science, and the environmental humanities.
I also serve as Associate Editor for The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies.
Book Project
My current book project, Aphoristic Science: Ecology, Psychology, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature, argues that a speculative style of writing—which I identify with the open-ended aphorism—undergirds the emergence of new scientific inquiry in the nineteenth century. I trace this style in chapters on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, William James, and W.E.B. Du Bois. More information is available here.
Upcoming Events
June 20–22, 2025 (Taipei, Taiwan): At the Emily Dickinson International Society, I will present the paper “An Ecology in Letters: Plant-Thinking in Dickinson’s Correspondence.” I will also participate in the pre-conference Critical Institute on June 19.
July 16, 2025 (Elmira, NY): I will give a lecture at the Center for Mark Twain Studies’s Park Church Summer Lecture Series. This will be during my two-week residence at Quarry Farm as a 2025 Quarry Farm Fellow.
January 8–11, 2026 (Toronto, Canada): At the Modern Language Association, I will present the paper “‘Science is very near us’: Dickinson and the Poetics of Science” as part of the Margaret Fuller Society panel. I will also present the paper “Science and Small Forms: Franklin and the Early Modern Aphorism” as part of a roundtable organized by the Society of Early Americanists.
See abstracts from my recent conference presentations here.