Humanities and Arts
Wesley T. Mott
Professor
Department: Humanities & Arts
Professional Page
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 Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; textual editing; business and professional writing
IQP Advising Interests
Museum issues; public policy on Martha's Vineyard; writing and editingResearch
My teaching and research interests span the antebellum period of American literature called the "American Renaissance." I have focused on New England Transcendentalism in its diverse literary, historical, theological, political, and environmental expressions.
My specialty has been Ralph Waldo Emerson, particularly his early career as a minister and the sermons that were the foreground of his later thought and great essays. I wrote the first book-length study of his sermons, which were then mostly available only in manuscript. Then I published a pilot edition of a representative sermon that prepared for the four-volume complete edition of his sermons, for which I edited volume 4. In 1989 I organized the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, an international scholarly organization. For ten years I served as the society's first Secretary, then as President during the 2003 bicentennial celebration of Emerson's birth. I am editor of Emerson Society Papers, the society's official publication based at WPI since 1990.
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