Dorothy Z. Baker
Professor
- Phone: (713) 743-2940
- Email: dzbaker@uh.edu
- Office: 207 Roy Cullen Building
Dorothy Z. Baker holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Maryland. Her teaching and research focus on early and antebellum American literature, the literature of New France, and literary translation. She is the author of Mythic Masks in Self-Reflexive Poetry (1986) and America’s Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana (2007) and editor of Poetics in the Poem (1996) and The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill (2005). She has also written many essays on the work of Cotton Mather, Hannah Webster Foster, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Paul LeJeune and Marie de l’Incarnation. Dorothy Baker has published translations of the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and Pierre Reverdy, and is currently translating the letters of Paul LeJeune.
An active member of the Society of Early Americanists, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, the Emily Dickinson International Society, and The Stowe Society, she has received research and travel grants from the American Council of Learned Societies. Dorothy Baker received a 1995 UH Enron Teaching Award and the 2000 Master Teacher Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. She currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of English.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Maryland
- M.A., University of Wisconsin
- B.A., Wells College
Research Interests
American Studies, Early American and Antebellum Literature, the Literature of New France, and Literary Translation
Selected Publications
Books
- America’s Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana (2007)
- The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill (2005)
- Poetics in the Poem: Critical Essays on American Self-Reflexive Poetry (1997)
- Mythic Masks in Self-Reflexive Poetry: A Study of Pan and Orpheus (1986)
Articles
- "Baroque Identities in New France: Paul LeJeune and Marie de l'Incarnation." New World Baroque. Ed. Monika Kaup and Lois Zamora. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
- "Aaron Copland's Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson: A Study of Dissonance and Harmony. The Emily Dickinson Journal 12.1 (2003): 1-24.
- "After the English Major." ADE Bulletin 133 (Winter 2003): 36-41.
- "Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Conversation' with the Atlantic Monthly: The Construction of The Minister's Wooing." Studies in American Fiction (2000): 27-38.
- "Excising the Text and Exorcising the Author: The Editorial Hand of Arthur B. Fuller in Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843." In Her Own Words: Nineteenth-Century Women Essayists. Ed. Sherry Linkon. New York: Garland, 1997. 97-112.
- "'Detested be the epithet!': Definition, Maxims, and the Language of Social Dicta in The Coquette." Essays in Literature 23.1 (1996): 58-68.
Translations
- “Madness of Vision.” By Christine Buci-Glucksmann. New World Baroque. Ed. Monika Kaup and Lois Zamora. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
- “Saltimbanques” and “Woman Ironing.” By Pierre Reverdy. Denver Quarterly 40.3 (2006): 115, 116.
- "Insomnia I, II, IV and VIII" and "Hour of the Soul I - II." By Marina Tsvetaeva. Modern Poetry in Translation 33 (1978): 19, 20.
Teaching
- ENGL 3325: Structures of Poetry
- ENGL 3350: American Literature 1620 - 1865
- ENGL 4390: Professional Internship
- ENGL 7367: Preseminar: American Literature 1620 - 1865
- ENGL 7396 Early American Women's Narrative
- ENGL 7396 American Art Song and American Poetry
- ENGL 8370: Colonial and Federal Literature
- ENGL 8376: Emily Dickinson
- ENGL 8390: Studies in Literary Translation
Affiliations
- American Comparative Literature Association
- International Comparative Literature Association
- American Literary Translators Association
- Emily Dickinson International Society
- The Stowe Society
- Society of Early Americanists
- Ohohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture
- Society for the Study of American Woman Writers
