Rate My Professor Carrie Bramen

Bramen’s scholarship centers on nineteenth-century American literature, U.S. Latinx literature, the transatlantic nineteenth century, cultural history, feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, and intellectual history. She authored American Niceness: A Cultural History (Harvard University Press, 2017), exploring niceness in democratic personality and imperial contexts, and The Uses of Variety: Modern Americanism and the Quest for National Distinctiveness (Harvard University Press, 2000), co-winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Prize for best first book. Select publications include “Niceness in a Neoliberal Age” (Public Culture, 2018), “Flirting in Yankeeland” in The Latino Nineteenth Century (NYU Press, 2016), and “James, Pragmatism and the Realist Ideal” in The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011). She has written for The Washington Post, The Conversation, Black Agenda Report, and Political Theology Network. Currently researching astrology in the U.S. for a book tentatively titled “Journey-work of the Stars,” following her essay “Astrological Speculation on Wall Street in the Progressive Era.” Bramen teaches nineteenth-century American literature, the American 1890s, U.S. Latinx literature, travel writing, and creative nonfiction. She received three teaching awards, including the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and presented “American Niceness from Plymouth Rock to Standing Rock” in Vermont Humanities’ Winter Series (February 2026).