Speakers Bureau Speaker
Eric Wertheimer, Ph.D., Phoenix
Eric Wertheimer received a B.A. from Haverford College, an M.A. in American Civilization as well as M.A. and Ph.D. in English (1994) from the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Wertheimer’s first book is Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876 (Cambridge University Press, 1998). His latest book is Underwriting: the Poetics of Insurance in Early America (Stanford University Press, 2006). He is currently working on a new book, Pretexts: War and Writing in the Early Republic. He has published articles on topics in early and nineteenth century American literature in American Literature, Early American Literature, Nineteenth Century Literature, and Arizona Quarterly. Professor Wertheimer has published poetry in Exquisite Corpse, Perihelion, Diagram, Shampoo, Adirondack Review, Muse Apprentice Guild, among other journals.
Insurance and Literature in America
This presentation explores how the social history of insurance underwriting in America, from the eighteenth century to the present, is essential to an understanding of how we conceive of ourselves as a nation with a common purpose in the present. When one takes seriously the word “underwriting” as a business term of art, it gains a flexibility that permits more developed cultural analysis and helps to explain the power of insurance in American life.
Host organization to provide a screen for a PowerPoint presentation.
The First American War
This presentation explores early American history and the beginning of the War of 1812, and how early Americans understood themselves, and communicated with others, in the context of the early nineteenth century.
