Max L. Chapnick
Postdoctoral Teaching Associate in English; Northeastern University
Ph.D., M.A. English and American Literature, Boston University
M.A. Creative Writing, Victoria University of Wellington
B.S. Physics; B.A. English, Washington and Lee University
chapnick @ bu.edu ; m.chapnick @ northeastern.edu
I teach college writing and literature as a scholar of nineteenth-century fiction. I've taught first-year writing, advanced writing in the disciplines, and courses that cover nineteenth and twentieth century literatures, environmental literature, science fiction, and political history. My scholarly work concerns the intersection of rejected knowledge (pseudo-science like mesmerism, spiritualism, and conjure), radical social movements, and transatlantic nineteenth-century literature.
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Teaching
Northeastern University, Instructor
ENGW 3307 Advanced Writing in Science, Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 (Writing Program) (Syllabus)
ENGW 1111 First-Year Writing, Fall 2023 and Spring 2024, two sections each semester (Writing Program) (Syllabus)
Boston University, Instructor
WR 152 Digital Writing Research: “Radical Boston,” Spring 2023 (Writing Program) (Syllabus)
EN 130 “(Politicizing) Science/Fiction,” Spring 2021 (English Department) (Syllabus)
EN 120 “Environmental Literature,” Fall 2020 (English Department) (Syllabus)
WR 150 Writing Research: "Quantum Modernism," Spring 2020 (Writing Program)
WR 120 Introduction to Writing: "Quantum Modernism," Fall 2019 (Writing Program)
Boston University, Teaching Assistant
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change, Fall 2022 (Honors College)
British Literature I, Spring 2019 (English Department)
Jane Eyre’s American Sisters, Fall 2018 (English Department)
Interviews & Recorded Presentations
Interviews on Alcott pseudonym and attributions
"Northeastern researcher believes he found 20 new works by Louisa May Alcott," CBS Boston, November 2023
"New research uncovers a pseudonym potentially used by author Louisa May Alcott," WBUR Radio Boston, November 2023
"Discovery of Louisa May Alcott work found under new pseudonym, researcher says," Northeastern Global News, November 2023
"Researcher uncovers a new body of work believed to be by Louisa May Alcott," The Guardian, November 2023
"Louisa May Alcott used pen names. A researcher thinks he found another," WBUR Arts & Culture News, October 2023
Recorded Presentations
"Mark Twain vs. Christian Science and Empire," Tenth Annual Quarry Farm Symposium, September 2023
"Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in Pseudo-Scientific Socialist Utopias," Park Church Lecture, July 2022
Awards
2023: Boston University Center for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship (declined)
2022: Quarry Farm Fellowship, Center for Mark Twain Studies
2022: Travel Awards, Boston University Graduate Student Organization, Louisa May Alcott Society, and C19 Coral Gables
2013-2014: U.S. Student Fulbright grantee in Creative Writing to New Zealand
2014: The Westchester Review, Writers Under 30, Poetry Winner
Research
Peer-reviewed Articles
“Duty and Ambition in Louisa May Alcott Poems, Old and New,” American Periodicals, forthcoming 2024
“New Louisa May Alcott Pieces: Radical Sensation in a Culture of Ambiguous Attribution,” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 11.1, 2023
“George Eliot, Edward Said, and Romantic Zionism,” special issue on “Palestine: Romanticism’s Contemporary,” edited by Lenora Hanson, Studies in Romanticism 62.2, 2023
“Girls’ High and the ‘Wild Facts’ of Race in Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” special issue on "Revisiting Black Boston," edited by Kerri Greenidge and Holly Jackson, The New England Quarterly 95:2, 2022
Academic Editing
Forum co-editor with Eagan Dean, “Louisa May Alcott’s Work at 150,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, forthcoming 2024
Co-editor of “The Phantom” by E. H. Gould and “The Painter’s Dream” by Louisa M. Alcott, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 11.1, 2023
Short Forms in Refereed Publications
“Year in Conferences,” co-reporter for the C19 Conference and the ALA Conference, ESQ, 69.1, 2023
“Year in Conferences,” co-reporter for the Society of American Women Writers Conference, ESQ, 68.1, 2022
“To Save Our Profession: Unionize!” (Forum Letter) PMLA 136:5, 2021
Review of Mary Bowden’s “H. G. Wells’s Plant Plot: Horticulture and Ecological Narration in The Time Machine,” Journal of Literature and Science, 14:1-2, 2021
Review of Rachel Crossland’s Modernist Physics: Waves, Particles, and Relativities in the Writings of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, Configurations 28:1, 2020
Public-Facing Work
Public and Creative Writing
Essay for The Conversation, "How I identified a probable pen name of Louisa May Alcott," December 2023
Podcast co-host and co-editor for the C19 Podcast, “PhDs Who Union,” August 2023
Interviews for the G19 New Book Forum: on Hollis Robbins Forms of Contention, January 2023; on Gordon Fraser’s Star Territory, August 2022; on Reed Gochberg’s Useful Objects, December 2021; on Hannah Murray’s Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction, October 2021; on Erica Fretwell’s Sensory Experiments, May 2021
Co-authored essay in NPQ (Non-Profit Quarterly), “Sustainable Justice: Unionization and the Fight for the Common Good in Boston,” October 2022
Essays for Current Affairs: “Sidewalk Socialists and the Path to Power,” July 2021; “The Banality of Merit: Unlearning Obama,” March 2021
Reviews and journalism for Dig Boston, such as "Pride, Prejudice, and the Patriarchy," 2018-2021
Selected poetry in: Bright Sparks, The Westchester Review, Sport, Truth or Beauty Anthology, Lit Crawl Wellington, Radio New Zealand, Eat Your Words, The Evansville Review