Lidphilipwalsh

These are the books which have formed me as a scholar and instructor or which just drove me to change the course of my life somehow. Most of them have to do with the literatures or history of the Western hemisphere. Some have been superseded by other works, but all have been fundamental to my teaching and/or research in some manner.

As a scholar, I explore the different ways that the various phenomena that we call “nature” are constructed throughout the Americas. Specifically, I look at the ways that scientific, political, and religious ideas in place at the time the expansion of the European powers across the Atlantic led to very different patterns of settlement in the Americas, and so created many distinct ways of viewing nature in the Western hemisphere. I also teach this subject as part of my course in world literatures.