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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.
 | This biography of a living person includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2018) |
Christopher Benfey | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 28, 1954 (age 70) Merion, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Subject | Emily Dickinson |
| Notable works | Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington |
Benfey was born in Merion, Pennsylvania,[citation needed] but spent most of his childhood in Richmond, Indiana.[1] and attended The Putney School.[2] His father was a German immigrant and his mother was from North Carolina.[1] He began his undergraduate studies at Earlham College,[2] where his father, Otto Theodor Benfey, was a professor in the Chemistry department,[1] and completed his B.A. at Guilford College.[2] Benfey holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.[2]
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,[3] 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.[4]
He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, where he has taught since 1989.[2] He is a Guggenheim fellow,[5] as well as a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.[5]
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- 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)
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