Rate My Professor Nina Baym

A pioneering revisionary historian and critic of American literature, Baym specialized in nineteenth-century writers, women’s fiction, nonfiction prose, and the relations of literary culture to broader American society. Her seminal Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870 (1978, second edition 1993) established the field of study on American women writers and created a macrostructure for understanding their contributions. Key publications include The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career (1976), Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (1984), Feminism and American Literary History: Essays (1992), American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860 (1995), American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences (2002), and Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927 (2011), which documented over 600 books by more than 340 women. As general editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, she broadened its scope to include more women writers. Baym directed 39 PhD dissertations, mentored young scholars and female professors, and was renowned as an exceptional lecturer and teacher who expanded the American literary canon and influenced generations in the field.