Christopher Benfey

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College. Critic, essayist, and author whose reviews in The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement established him as a contemporary arbiter of modern and late twentieth-century American literature. Interests and scholarship transcend academic disciplines and range from art and literature to social history. In addition to work on literary figures and movements, is known as an Emily Dickinson scholar. Served as an art critic for Slate and contributed to Travel + Leisure. Literary studies include The Double Life of Stephen Crane (1992), Degas in New Orleans (1997), and A Summer of Hummingbirds (2008), which won the Christian Gauss Award from Phi Beta Kappa. Author of a family memoir, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay (2012). Poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Pequod, and Ploughshares. Honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.