Lawrence Buell

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Lawrence Buell (born 1939) is the current Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, specialist on antebellum American literature and a pioneer of Ecocriticism. He is the 2007 recipient of the Jay Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary studies, the "highest professional award that the American Literature Section of the MLA can give." He won the 2003 Warren-Brooks Award for outstanding literary criticism for his 2003 book on Ralph Waldo Emerson. His Writing for an Endangered World won the 2001 John G. Cawelti Award for the best book in the field of American Culture Studies.

Life and work

Professor Buell earned an A.B. at Princeton University before enrolling at Cornell University for his Ph.D. He was a professor at Oberlin College before moving to Harvard in 1990.

Buell served as the Harvard College Dean of Undergraduate Education from 1992–1996, and later chaired the Department of English and American Literature and Languages. He is also on the graduate committee for degrees in the study of American Civilization.



Both the Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson have regularly requested commentary from Buell for published articles concerning his views on undergraduate life. His term as Dean of Undergraduate Education and previous...
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