Christopher Benfey
{{short description|American literary critic and scholar}}
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{{Infobox writer
| name = Christopher Benfey
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| birth_date = {{birth-date and age|October 28, 1954}}
| birth_place = Merion, Pennsylvania, U.S.
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| occupation = Professor
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| subject = Emily Dickinson
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| notableworks =Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington
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Christopher Benfey (born October 28, 1954) is an American literary critic and Emily Dickinson scholar. He is the Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.
Early life and education
Benfey was born in Merion, Pennsylvania,{{citation needed|date=April 2020}} but spent most of his childhood in Richmond, Indiana.{{cite web |last1=Keller |first1=Julia |title=Digging in the dirt, author Christopher Benfey unearths his family's story |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-xpm-2012-05-23-ct-ent-0524-christopher-benfey-20120523-story.html |website=chicagotribune.com |accessdate=4 April 2020 |date=May 23, 2012}} and attended The Putney School. His father was a German immigrant and his mother was from North Carolina. He began his undergraduate studies at Earlham College, where his father, Otto Theodor Benfey, was a professor in the Chemistry department, and completed his B.A. at Guilford College. Benfey holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.
Career
Benfey is a specialist in 19th and 20th century American literature. He is also an established essayist and critic who has been published in The Atlantic,{{cite web |title=Christopher Benfey |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/author/christopher-benfey/ |website=The Atlantic |accessdate=4 April 2020}} The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. He was an art critic for Slate.{{cite journal |last1=Klein |first1=Julia M. |title=Christopher Benfey's Flight of Fancy |journal=Chronicle of Higher Education |date=June 2008 |issue=v54 n41 |page=B17}}
He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, where he has taught since 1989.{{cite web |title=Christopher Benfey |url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/people/christopher-benfey |website=Mount Holyoke College |accessdate=4 April 2020 |language=en |date=16 May 2016}} He is a Guggenheim fellow,{{cite web |last1=Goodall |first1=Hannah |title=LibGuides: BIRSS: Stephen Crane and The Red Badge of Courage: Keynote Speaker - Dr. Christopher Benfey |url=http://rwu.libguides.com/TheRedBadgeofCourage/ChristopherBenefy |website=rwu.libguides.com |accessdate=4 April 2020 |language=en |date=2020}} as well as a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Books
- Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable (1999)
- The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, (2003)
- A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade (2008)
- American Audacity: Literary Essays North and South (2010)
- Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay (2012)
Notes
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/christopher_benfey Official website] - Mount Holyoke College
- [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/87 Christopher Benfey in the New York Review of Books]
- [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21796 The Woman in White] Joyce Carol Oates review of Benfey's A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade
- [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/87 Author page and article archive] from The New York Review of Books
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Category:American literary critics
Category:Earlham College alumni
Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Category:Literary critics of English
Category:Mount Holyoke College faculty
Category:Writers from Richmond, Indiana
Category:Guilford College alumni
Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Category:The Putney School alumni
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