Contact Information

Biography

Greg Barnhisel is a Professor of English and has been at Duquesne University since 2003. Originally from Oregon, he earned degrees at Reed College, New York University, and the University of Texas at Austin, and taught at two universities in Texas and at the University of Southern California, before coming to Duquesne. He teaches classes in writing, American literature and culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Irish literature and culture, Pittsburgh’s art and literature, and the history of books and publishing.
 
In both his classes and his research, he is particularly interested in exploring how a society’s institutions—from its schools to its governmental agencies to its museums—shape how people create and understand creative literature. He regularly takes students to Ireland for a short-term study-abroad class about modern Irish literature, and also enjoys bringing students on field trips in the city of Pittsburgh to learn more about the art and culture of the city. His writing classes emphasize how we write to develop and improve our critical thinking, and so research and drafting are central to his teaching. He has published two textbooks for first-year writing classes that implement these ideas.
 
He is the author of three books, including James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound (2005), Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (2015), and Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage, and American Power (2024), and has published widely in scholarly journals. In addition, he is the editor of two anthologies about publishing, literature, and the Cold War (Pressing the Fight: Print, Propaganda, and the Cold War (2010) and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures (2022)) and has been editor of the scholarly journal Book History since 2014. He has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale University, Harvard University, Princeton University, the Australian National University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Foundation.
 
Dr. Barnhisel also enjoys writing for a general audience beyond scholars and professors, and has published articles and reviews on history, literature, art, and music in venues like the Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, the New Republic, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Public Books, Mental Floss, and the Pittsburgh City Paper.

Education

  • Ph.D., English, University of Texas at Austin, 1999
  • M.A., English, New York University, 1995
  • B.A., English, Reed College, 1992

Research Interests or Expertise

  • 20th Century American Literature and Culture
  • Book History
  • Modernism
  • Writing
  • 20th Century Irish Literature
  • The Publishing Industry

School

Recent Journalism and Public Writing:

  • "Searching for a Spy." ANZASA Online. 30 Sept. 2019. https://anzasablog.wordpress.com/2019/09/30/searching-for-a-spy
  • "Actually Existing Ireland." TheBattleground.eu 17 July 2019. medium.com/thebattleground/actually-existing-ireland-77aa926b07a8
  • "When Terrorism Hits Home." Souciant.com 1 Nov. 2018. souciant.com/2018/11/when-terrorism-hits-home/
  • "Finks, Fronts, and Puppets: Revisiting the Cultural Cold War." Los Angeles Review of Books 8 Jan. 2017. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/finks-fronts-puppets-revisiting-cultural-cold-war/
  • "The Man Who Made American Modernism, and Modernism American." Humanities Jan/Feb. 2016: 30-5. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/januaryfebruary/feature/the-man-who-made-american-modernism-and-modernism-american

Books:

  • Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy. Columbia University Press, 2015
  • Pressing the Fight: Print, Propaganda, and the Cold War. Edited by Greg Barnhisel and Cathy Turner. University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.
  • James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.

Articles and Chapters in Refereed Publications:

  • "Moderne und Massengeschmack." Amerika! Disney • Rockwell • Pollock • Warhol (exhibition catalog). Hamburg, Germany: Bucerius Kunst Forum, 2019: 10-19.
  • "New Directions Books." In Lise Jaillant, ed, Publishing Modernist Fiction and Poetry. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2019: 175-92.
  • "A Declining Empire in a Rising Power: British Writers in America." In Matthew Taunton and Benjamin Kohlmann, eds, A History of 1930s British Literature. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 2019: 331-44.
  • "Small Magazines." In Ichiro Takayoshi, ed., American Literature in Transition: The 1920s. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018: 417-33.
  • "Packaging Faulkner as a Cold War Modernist." In Jay Watson and Jaime Harker, eds, Faulkner and Book History. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017: 158-74.
  • "Modernism and the MFA." In Loren Glass, ed., After the Program Era. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016: 55-66.
  • "Modernism and Antimodernism at Harvard: James Laughlin's Early Poetry." Journal of Modern Literature 39.3 (Spring 2016).
  • "James Laughlin, Robert Hutchins, and Cold War Cultural Freedom." Princeton University Library Chronicle 75.3 (Spring 2014): 385-405.
  • "Wikipedia and the Wisdom of Crowds: A Student Project." Co-authored with Marcia Rapchak. Communications in Information Literacy 8.2.
  • "Encounter Magazine and the Twilight of Modernism." ELH 81.1 (Spring 2014): 381-416.
  • Barnhisel, Greg, Evan Stoddard, and Jennifer Gorman. "Incorporating Process-Based Writing Pedagogy into First-Year Learning Communities: Strategies and Outcomes." Journal of General Education 61.4 (2012): 461-87.
  •  "Cold Warriors of the Book: The USIA and American Book Programs in the 1950s." Book History 13 (2010): 185-217. 
  • "Publishing and Publishers." In Nadel, Ira, ed., Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010: 356-65.
  • "Perspectives USA and the Cultural Cold War: Modernism in Service of the State." Modernism/Modernity 14.4 (November 2007): 729-54. 
  • Desselle, Shane, Christopher K. Surratt, Janet Astle, Leigh Ann White, Lina Yacovelli, Greg Barnhisel, Megan Jewell, Heather Shippen, Erin R. Holmes. "Evolution of a Required Service-Learning Course: Lessons Learned and Plans for the Future." Journal of Pharmacy Education 12.1 (2005): 23-40.
  • "Ezra Pound and James Laughlin: The Publisher as Spin Doctor." Paideuma 29.3 (Winter 2000): 165-178.
  • "Marketing Modernism During the Great War." In Mackaman and Mays, eds., World War One and the Cultures of Modernity. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
  • "Hitch Your Wagon to a Star: The Square $ Series and Ezra Pound." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 92.3 (Sept. 1998): 273-95.

Textbooks:

  • Connecting with Culture. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012.
  • Media and Messages: Strategies and Readings in Public Rhetoric. New York: Longman, 2005.

Editorial:

  • Editor, Book History
  • Series editor, "Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book" series, University of Massachusetts Press
  • External Visitor Support, Research School of the Humanities and Arts, Australian National University ($4796 AUD), 2019.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship ($50,400), 2013.
  • Princeton University Library Research Grant, 2013-14.
  • Travel Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, 2013.
  • Eugene P. Beard Award for Leadership in Ethics, 2012.
  • Duquesne University Faculty Development Fund grant ($6,500), 2012.
  • Duquesne University McAnulty College internal NEH Endowment grant ($2,500), 2008.
  • Mellon Fellowship ($5,000), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 2007-8.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend ($5,000), 2005.
  • 2003-4 Stanley J. Kahrl Fellowship in Literary Manuscripts ($3,000), Houghton Library, Harvard University.