Larzer Ziff

Research on American literary culture with attention to the material as well as social and political circumstances that both shape literary production and are affected by it. His literary histories have dealt with the Puritan period, the age of Emerson, the American fin-de-sicle, and, most recently, the emergence of travel writing as a profession and its function as a critique of domestic as well as an exposition of foreign culture. Current research centers on exploration and national consciousness.