Faculty & Staff
Wesley T. Mott
Professor
Office: Salisbury Laboratories, 236
Phone: +1-508-831-5441
Fax: +1-508-831-5932
wmott@wpi.edu
Educational Background
- A.B., Boston University, 1968
- A.M., Boston University, 1969
- Ph.D., Boston University, 1974
Research & Teaching Interests
American literature, especially Emerson and Thoreau; textual editing; non-fiction writing
IQP Advising Interests
Museum issues; the legacy of Thoreau; public policy on Martha's Vineyard; writing and editing
Research
Wesley Mott has published several books on 19th-century American literature—especially New England Transcendentalism—including “The Strains of Eloquence”: Emerson and His Sermons, Volume 4 in The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a variety of reference books. His articles have appeared in such journals as American Literature, New England Quarterly, Phylon, and Studies in the American Renaissance. He serves on the editorial boards of The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies and the Thoreau Society Bulletin.
In 1989, Mott organized the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society. He served as the society’s first Secretary for ten years, and for twenty years published Emerson Society Papers at WPI. President during the 2003 international bicentennial celebration of Emerson’s birth, he was also co-initiator of the 2006 conference “Transatlanticism in American Literature”—co-sponsored by the Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe societies—at the University of Oxford. He has been elected President again for 2010-2011.
Mott is recipient of the WPI Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Research, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society Distinguished Achievement Award, and the Thoreau Society’s Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award.
Recent Publications
Professional Experience & Activities
- Editor, Journal in the Princeton Thoreau Edition
- Member on the advisory boards of the Thoreau Society, Louisa May Alcott Society,
Walden Woods Project, Save Our Heritage, and alumni association of Boston
University.