Degrees

Ph.D. in English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 2007
M.A. in English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 2003
B.A. in English and Philosophy, Florida International University, Miami, FL, 2001

Research Area

British Romanticism
Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Islam and Romantic Orientalism
Critical Theory
Postcolonial Theory and Interpretation
Transnational/Transoceanic Studies

Current Research

Romanticism Re-Oriented: Indo-Persian Travelers and English Literary Culture, 1760-1820 (in progress)

Current Courses

English 252b: Restoration and Eighteenth Century: “The Age of Enlightenment” in the Long Eighteenth Century (Fall 2012)
English 254: The Romantic Period: Romanticism and Apocalypse (Fall 2012)

Current Positions

Co-organizer of the Public Square Speaker’s series, Vanderbilt University English Department, 2012-2013.
Co-organizer for the 18th/19th Century Colloquium, The Warren Penn Center, Vanderbilt University, 2012-2013.
Member of the Undergraduate Studies Committee, 2009-2012
Bibliographer for Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (Routledge), 2008-present.

Professional Societies

The Group of Early Modern Cultural Studies
The North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
The Modern Language Association

Professional Honors

National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Stipend Fellowship, June through August 2012
Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship, Vanderbilt University, 2011-2012
Huntington Library Mayers Fellowship, 2011-12
Research Scholar Fellowship, Vanderbilt University, 2010-11.
Clark Library/Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies Short-Term Fellowship, 2010.
Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2010-11.
Research Scholar Grant, Vanderbilt University, Office of the Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Education, 2008-09.
Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship, 2005-07.
University Fellowship, University of Illinois, fall 2005, 2006-7.

Publications

Book:
Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670-1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)
Articles:
“Blake, Swedenborg, and Muhammad: The Prophet Tradition, Revisited.” Journal of Religion and Literature. (forthcoming 2012)
“‘To strike out a New Path:’ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Astell, and the Politics of the Imperial Harem.” Under the Veil: Spirituality and Feminism in Post-Reformation Britain and Europe. Ed. Katherine M. Quinsey (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012).
“Turning Turk, Turning Heretic: Joseph Pitts of Exeter and the Early Enlightenment, 1670-1740.” Britain and the Muslim World: Historical Perspectives. Ed. Gerald MacLean (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011), 85-101.
“A Hungarian Revolution in Restoration England: Henry Stubbe, Radical Islam, and the Rye House Plot.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 51.1-2 (2010): 1-25.
“The Hermetic Tradition of Arabic Islam and the Colonial Politics of Landor’s Gebir.” Studies in Romanticism. 46.4 (2007): 433-459.
“In the Name of the ‘Incestuous Mother’: Islam and Excremental Protestantism in De Quincey’s Infidel Book.” The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. 7.2 (2007): 57-87.
Book Reviews:
“Debunking William Hazlitt’s Liberal Myth: Public Print Culture in the Long Counter- revolution,” Review of Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790-1832, by Kevin Gilmartin. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 48 2007. http://www. english.uiuc. edu/ecti/links.html.
Rev. of Staging Islam in England: Drama and Culture, 1640-1685, by Matthew Birchwood. Seventeenth-Century News. 67.3-4 (2009): 145-148.

Biography

Humberto Garcia is an Assistant Professor of English at Vanderbilt University who specializes in British Romanticism and eighteenth-century literature, with a focus on Romantic Orientalism, postcolonial criticism, and global/transnational studies. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, along with a certificate in Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Based on his dissertation work, his research examines the formative role played by Islam in shaping radical Enlightenment critiques of church and state in early modern England. A corrective addendum to Edward Said’s Orientalism, his book, titled Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670-1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), shows that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Edmund Burke, Samuel T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Percy and Mary Shelley not only were influenced by international events in the Muslim world but also saw in that world and its history a viable path to interrogate, contest, and redefine British concepts of liberty. He has published numerous articles on this subject in peer-reviewed journals such as Studies in Romanticism and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. He has also presented at many national and international conferences. In general, his teaching and research seek to encourage cross-cultural dialogue between East and West, post-9/11, drawing attention to the formative role played by nonwestern cultures in shaping enlightenment discourses during the long eighteenth century, 1660-1840. His work is inspired by his life-long romantic quest for the sublime in nature, an imaginative well-spring for creating knowledge that re-connects disparate ethnicities, religions, and nations.