Associate Professor, Minard 322H, 231-7158, Gary.Totten@ndsu.edu
I began working at NDSU in fall 2004, after teaching for five years at Concordia College in Moorhead,
MN. I received both a BA in Humanities (1990) and an MA in English (1993) from Brigham Young University.
My PhD in American Literature is from Ball State University (1998). My research is focused mainly on the
period of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature and culture, though I also
research and teach texts from earlier and later periods. An important sub-specialty of my research is
travel literature. My recent publications have focused on the fiction of Edith Wharton and the travel
writing of Theodore Dreiser. I recently published an article on the transatlantic travel writing of Booker
T. Washington and have just completed a project on tropes of travel and lynching in Ida B. Wells's work.
In terms of a theoretical framework, I would characterize my approach as a blending of new historicism and
narrative theory, with a healthy dose of cultural and critical race theory. I also enjoy archival research
and have recently spent time in manuscript collections at the rare book libraries of the University of
Pennsylvania and Yale University. There's nothing quite like the feel and smell of old books and paper to
set the heart racing (I exaggerate, but only slightly). I also enjoy research into the material culture of
a period as found in periodicals, advertisements, and other textual and visual artifacts, and in my
teaching, I ask students to grapple with such artifacts as a way to better appreciate the complexities of
texts and cultures. I routinely teach undergraduate and graduate courses in late nineteenth and twentieth
century American literature, travel literature, and writing in the humanities and social sciences.
Dr. Totten will be on leave 2008-09.
Last updated: March 23, 2008.