I’m Associate Professor in NYU’s Department of English, where I’ve taught undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and culture since 2001. During the 2012-13 academic year I will be Visiting Associate Professor of Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi.

My work focuses on two broad areas: American and Atlantic World literature through 1900 and New York City writing and culture from the Dutch colonial period to the present, with particular focus on the late 20th-century Downtown Scene.

My training, scholarship, and teaching are interdisciplinary: I received my Ph.D. from Boston University in American Studies and describe myself as a cultural historian of writing. As a result, my literary history courses tend to double as cultural history courses. In them I direct a significant amount of attention to issues of method and discipline, including questions about the status of literary texts and interpretation as categories of historical evidence.

This site exists primarily to archive information about my teaching, research, and professional writing. I blog about New York literature, culture, and history at A History of New York (a.k.a. PWHNY) and about miscellaneous topics at The Great Whatsit. I’m on the editorial board of common-place, an online quarterly magazine about early American culture. Follow @pwhny and/or @_waterman on Twitter. You can become a fan of PWHNY on Facebook. I don’t use Facebook myself.

Contact information:

Bryan Waterman
Visiting Associate Professor of Literature
New York University Abu Dhabi
DTC S-224
Behind the ADIA Tower and across Al Nasr Street from the Cultural Foundation
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
phone: +97126284927
bryan.waterman@nyu.edu

Spring 2013 office hours: U 3-5; T 4-5.