John Elder

English & American Literatures

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Office Hours:
on leave spring term

John Elder

College Professor

Hillcrest 216

Phone: (802) 443 - 5281

Email: elder@middlebury.edu

Degrees, Specializations & Interests:
A.B., Pomona College; Ph.D. Yale University

Specializations: Romantic & Modern Poetry; American Nature Writing; Japan's Haiku Tradition; Environmental Studies

Professor John Elder specializes in American Nature Writing, Wordsworth, Frost, Pastoral Literature, Basho and the Haiku Tradition, and Contemporary Poetry. He has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship.

His two most recent books are Reading the Mountains of Home (Harvard University Press, 1998) and The Frog Run (Milkweed Editions, 2002). He has completed a manuscript called Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, on the 19-century environmental writer George Perkins Marsh, and he is starting one on sugaring, to be called In Hardwood Groves. He frequently publishes essays in periodicals such as Orion, Wild Earth, New Literary History, and Vermont Life. Elder also frequently gives readings at bookstores and college campuses as well as delivering talks at conferences on nature writing, environmental studies, and environmental education.

Elder serves on the boards of the Vermont Land Trust and Vermont Family Forests. He and his family have a sugaring operation in the hills above Starksboro, Vt. Elder received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. from Yale University.