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FACULTY BIOGRAPHY
 
H. Bruce Franklin
John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies

Email
hbf@andromeda.rutgers.edu

PHONE
(973) 353-5279 x 515

OFFICE
Hill Hall Room 515


CLICK HERE FOR DR. FRANKLIN'S WEB SITE

 

BIOGRAPHY

One of America's leading cultural historians, H. Bruce Franklin is the author or editor of eighteen books and more than 200 articles on culture and history published in more than a hundred major magazines and newspapers, academic journals, and reference works. He has given over five hundred addresses on college campuses, on radio and TV shows, and at academic conferences, museums, and libraries, and he has participated in making four films. He has taught at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, and Yale and currently is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark.

Before becoming an academic, Franklin worked in factories, was a tugboat mate and deckhand, and flew for three years in the United States Air Force as a Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer.

Franklin has published continually on the history and literature of the Vietnam War since 1966, when he became widely known for his activist opposition to the war. His pioneering course on the war and his book M.I.A. Or Mythmaking in America have had a major national impact, and he is co-editor of the widely-adopted history text Vietnam and America: A Documented History.  His latest book, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, offers a sweeping vision of American culture into the 21st century.

Another area where Franklin's work has achieved international distinction is the study of science fiction and its relation to culture and history. In 1961 he offered one of the first two university courses in science fiction, and his book Future Perfect played a key role in establishing the importance and academic legitimacy of the subject. His Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction won the Eaton Award for 1981; in 1983 he won the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Scholarship of the Science Fiction Research Association; in 1990 he was named the Distinguished Scholar of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts; and in 1991 he was Guest Curator for the "Star Trek and the Sixties" exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Franklin's first book, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology, has been in print continually since 1963 and is regarded as a classic work of scholarship and criticism. He is a past president of the Melville Society, and continues to publish about Melville.

Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist established Franklin as the world's leading authority on American prison literature. His 1998 anthology Prison Writing in 20th-Century America  is already widely influential.

 

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Arts, Amherst College, Massachusetts, 1955. 
Doctor of Philosophy, English and American Literature, Stanford University,   1961. 
Certificate in Environmental Horticulture, College of San Mateo, California, 1974. 

 

EXPERIENCE

1987- : John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, Rutgers--The State University, Newark, New Jersey. 
1980-1987 Professor II (Distinguished Professor) of English, Rutgers University. 
1975-1980 Professor of English, Rutgers University. 
1974-1975 (second semester): Visiting Lecturer in American Studies, Graduate School, Yale University.  Visiting Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University, Connecticut. 
1965-1972: Associate Professor of English and American Literature, Stanford University. 
1971: Lecturer, Venceremos College, Redwood City, California. 
1967: Lecturer, Free University of Paris, France. 
1964-1965: Assistant Professor of English and American Literature, The Johns Hopkins University. . 
1961-1964: Assistant Professor of English and American Literature, Stanford University. 
1963-1964: Lecturer, Department of Adult Education, San Jose, California. 
1956-1959: Navigator and intelligence officer, Strategic Air Command, United States Air Force. (Resigned commission as Captain, USAF Reserve, in protest against Vietnam War, 1966.) 
1955-1956: Tugboat deckhand and mate, Pennsylvania RR Marine Department, Pier 'H,' Jersey City, New Jersey. 
1954: Foreman, shipping department, Carb Manufacturing Company, Brooklyn, NY. 
1953: Upholsterer, Carb Manufacturing Company. 
1951 and 1952: Batch worker, Mayfair Photofinishing Company, Brooklyn, NY. 

 

COURSES TAUGHT
 
Vietnam and America; The Vietnam War and American Literature
The Vietnam War, Literature, and theTeaching of Literature (Graduate Seminar)
Crime and Punishment in American Literature
Science Fiction, Technology, and Society

 

PUBLICATIONS (selected)

The Wake Of The Gods: Melville's Mythology. Stanford University Press, 1963. Second (revised) edition and paperback edition, 1966. Third edition, 1983. In print. ISBN 0-8047-0137-7.

Future Perfect: American Science Fiction Of The 19th Century. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1966. 401 pages. Second (revised) edition, 1968. Paperback edition (Galaxy Books, Oxford University Press), 1968. Expanded and revised edition (hardback and paperback), Oxford University Press, 1978. Expanded and revised edition (paperback), New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. In print. ISBN 0-8135-2152-1.

Herman Melville's Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (edition). New York: G. P. Putnam's, Capricorn Books, 1964. Out of print.

The Scarlet Letter, Together With Main Street, Ethan Brand, And Hawthorne's Published Critical Writings, compiled, edited, with critical introduction. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1967. Out of print.

Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Annotated edition with critical introduction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Out of print.

Who Should Run The Universities? John A. Howard, President of Rockford College, co-author. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1969. Out of print.

From The Movement: Toward Revolution. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971. (Historical essays and collection of primary documents.) Out of print.

Back Where You Came From. New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1975. Out of print.

The Victim As Criminal And Artist: Literature From The American Prison. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1978. Paperback (revised and expanded) edition published as Prison Literature In America: The Victim As Criminal And Artist. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1982. [Annotated bibliography published as companion volume.] Third edition, revised and expanded, including "Annotated Bibliography of Literature by American Prisoners, 1798-1988," New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Out of print.

Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1980. Out of print. Signed copies available.

The Iron Heel, by Jack London (edition). Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1981. In print. ISBN 0-88208-108-7.

American Prisoners And Ex-Prisoners: An Annotated Bibliography . Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1982. Out of print.

Countdown To Midnight. (Collection of science fiction about nuclear weapons, with historical introduction and biographical, critical, and bibliographic materials.) New York: Daw Books, New American Library, 1984. Out of print.

Vietnam And America: A Documented History. Co-edited with historical introductions and notes co-authored with Marvin E. Gettleman, Jane M. Franklin, and Marilyn Young. New York: Grove Press, 1985; 1988. Revised and expanded edition, New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1995. In print. ISBN 0-8021-3362-2.

War Stars: The Superweapon And The American Imagination. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Paperback edition, 1990. In print. ISBN 0-19-506692-8

M.I.A. Or Mythmaking In America. New York: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1992. Revised and expanded edition (paperback), New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993. In print. ISBN 0-8135-2001-0.

The Vietnam War In American Stories, Songs, And Poems. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996. In print. ISBN 0-312-11552-0.

Prison Writing In 20th-Century America. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Foreword by Tom Wicker. In print. ISBN 0-14-02.7305.0.

Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. In print. ISBN 1-55849-279-8

 

 

 


 

 

Rutgers-Newark English Department

Professor Virginia Tiger, PhD, Chair

Hill Hall Room 501

Newark, New Jersey 07102-1801

Telephone: 973.353.5279

Fax: 973.353.1450

Email: engnwk@andromeda.rutgers.edu

Website: http://english.newark.rutgers.edu

 

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