Seth Moglen is a scholar of 19th- and 20th-century American literature, with particular expertise in modernism and African American writing.
Moglen’s research focuses on the relationship between literary and political movements in the United States. He is especially interested in the role that literature has played in the development of movements for economic justice and for racial and gender equality. He has published on modernism and African American literature, on the history of the American Left and the African American freedom struggle, on psychoanalytic and cultural theory and on the democratic promise of the 21st-century university.
Moglen is currently at work on an experimental book that employs modernist literary strategies in order to explore the history of one iconic city, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from its 18th-century founding to its post-industrial present. The book explores the egalitarian aspirations of the people of Bethlehem over the course of three centuries, as well as the evolving structures of economic exploitation and racial and gender hierarchy that have constrained those aspirations. Written both for scholars of American Studies and for a broad general audience, the book seeks to contribute to contemporary discussions of what equality has meant, and might yet mean, in the United States.
Moglen is actively engaged in a range of public humanities collaborations, many of which have emerged in tandem with his current book project. To learn more about his public humanities practice – including his first play, Hidden Seed: Bethlehem’s Forgotten Utopia – click here.