Proprietor, Part of the Farce 

Director, Glenville State College Honors Program

Dr. Chapman specializes in US Literature, particularly US literature of the 18th- and 19th-centuries. He is particularly interested in the way the maritime shapes US civic and imperial practices. At Glenville, he teaches the American literature courses, women’s literature, and first-year writing courses, as well as the seminars in the Honors Program. As a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, he taught a range of courses that included Bible as Literature, Narrative and Technology, Detective Fiction, and The Western. Dr. Chapman’s writing has appeared in Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal, Popmatters, and ESQ.

Recent Publications

“The Forest Cannot Hide It: The Oceanic and the Revolutionary Imaginary in Hawthorne,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2023, pp. 141-58.

“Master and Commander: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, US Authoritarianism, and the US Literature Survey,” The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, 2021, pp. 65-84.

“How Professional Wrestling Flung Itself Into the Arena of the Opinionated Class.” Popmatters, 28 Aug. 2017, https://www.popmatters.com/professional-wrestling-flung-itself-into-the-arena-of-the-opinionated-class-2495382721.html.

Recent Presentations

“The Most Friendly Touch: Affinity and Family in The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun,” Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference, Toronto, ON, January 2026

"The Just Spirit of Equality: Herman Melville and the Revolutionary Maritime in Mardi and White-Jacket," Oceanic Melville: 14th International Melville Conference, Mystic, CT, June 2025

“The Road to Serfdom: Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and the Anti-Democratic Imagination,” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture, Louisville, KY, February 2025

“The Forest Cannot Hide It: The Oceanic and the Revolutionary Imaginary in Hawthorne,” American Literature Association (ALA) Conference, Chicago, IL, May 2024

“Saucer Shaped Lights Making People Uptight: The 1896-97 Air-Ship Craze, Edisonades, and Apocalyptic Technologies,” C19: The Society of19th-Century Americanists Biennial Conference (C19), Pasadena, CA, March 2024

"Leaning and Loafing: Resilient and Revolutionary Inaction in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano," Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference, Niagara Falls, NY, March 2023

“I Thought I’d Do a Little Run: Frederick Douglass and Reconstructing the Origins of Black Radical Thought,” C19, Virtual, March 2022

“From Living the Good Life to Whole Living: The Neoliberal Turn and the Back-to-the-Land Movements of Appalachia,” Popular Culture-American Culture Association Conference, Virtual, May 2021

“Protestant Work Epic: Labor, Loafing, and Form in Alcott’s Little Women Trilogy,” ALA Conference, Boston, MA, May 2019