Eric Walker

Emeritus Professor
Eric Walker
ewalker@fsu.edu
British Romantic culture, Austen, adoption studies

ERIC WALKER, Professor Emeritus and Chair of the department from 2012-17, started as an Assistant Professor at FSU in 1984 and retired as Professor in December 2018. From 2009-11, he served as President of the FSU Faculty Senate and a member of the FSU Board of Trustees. He was the recipient of the university's Distinguished University Teaching Professor Award in 1996, in addition to numerous other teaching honors at FSU and elsewhere in the profession. Prof. Walker also served two terms as Associate Chair of the department, from 1988-93 and from 2006-09, and served as an Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences from 2004-06.

Dr. Walker specializes in 18th and 19th century British literature and is the author of numerous journal articles and two books: Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen After War, published by Stanford University Press in 2009, and Haphazard Families: Romanticism, Nation, and the Prehistory of Modern Adoption, forthcoming from Ohio State University Press in Spring 2024. He is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina and holds advanced degrees from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland (M.Litt.), where his study was funded by the St. Andrews Society of New York, and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.A. and Ph.D.), where he was the recipient of the Earl Hartsell Award for Excellence in Teaching. His ongoing work is chiefly in adoption studies; he now lives and writes back in North Carolina.

BOOKS

OTHER RECENT PUBLICATIONS

  • “Adoption, Abortion, and Nonpersons,” Adoption & Culture, 10.2 (2022), 192-96. Special topic issue of responses from thirty adoption scholars to the U.S. Supreme Court “Dobbs” decision on abortion.
  • “The Unremarked Wordsworth: Geoffrey Hartman and The River Duddon Volume,” The Wordsworth Circle, 51.1 (2020): 54-72. Special issue for the 200th anniversary of the publication of William Wordsworth’s volume of poetry The River Duddon in 1820.
  • “Robert Pinsky, the Foundling Tokens, and Kinship Theory” Adoption & Culture, 7.2 (2019): 192-205.
  • “Charles Lamb, Emma Isola, and the Politics of Adoption, 1820,” The Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. (2019): 12-19.
  • “Mourning, Adoption, and Literary Form,” Adoption & Culture, Vol. 6 no. 1 (2018): 11-14.
  • “Adoption, Narrative, and Nation, 1800-1850: The Case of William Austin,” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 53 no. 4 (2014): 960-91.
  • “Austen and Cavell,” in Stanley Cavell and British Romanticism, ed. Eric Lindstrom, Romantic Circles Praxis Series, ed. Orrin Wang (online), July 2014.
  • "'In the Place of a Parent': Austen and Adoption," Persuasions On-Line, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring 2010) (see below for online link).
  • "The Long Revolution of Raymond Williams: Culture and Society Fifty Years On," The Wordsworth Circle, 2006.
  • "The Muse of Indifference," PMLA, Jan. 2005. Special Topic issue "On Poetry"
  • "Rewriting Romantic Revision: A New Byron Letter," Keats-Shelley Journal, 2004.
  • Other essays have appeared in Studies in Philology, Studies in Romanticism, European Romantic Review, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Studies in English Literature (SEL), Philological Quarterly, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and other journals and essay collections.

WORK AVAILABLE ONLINE

  • "'In the Place of a Parent': Austen and Adoption," Persuasions On-Line, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring 2010), http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol30no2/walker.html
  • "The Muse of Indifference," PMLA, Vol. 120, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 197-218. Available via institutional subscriptions to the IngentaConnect database: http://www.ingentaconnect.com
  • Review of William Galperin, The Historical Austen (Pennsylvania, 2003), Romanticism on the Net, November 2004. http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n32-33/009266ar.html
  • Review of Duncan Wu, Wordsworth's Reading, 1800-1815 (Cambridge, 1995), Romanticism on the Net, No. 5 (February 1997). http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/wu.html
  • "Biographia Literaria and Wordsworth's Revisions," Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 28, No. 4 (1988), pp. 569-88. Available via institutional subscriptions to the JSTOR database: http://www.jstor.org

PRESENTATIONS

  • “Adoption, Neuroscience, and Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem,” 8th International Conference on Adoption and Culture, Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (virtual), October 2021.
  • "Robert Pinsky, Lily Cole, and Kinship Theory," 7th International Conference on Adoption and Culture, Alliance for the Study of Alliance and Culture, University of California, Berkeley, Oct. 2018.
  • "Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb, and Emma Isola: Adoption and Oppositional Politics, 1820,” 10th Biannual Coleridge Conference, Jesus College, Cambridge University, Aug. 2018.
  • "Adoption, Narrative, and Aubade: Edward Hirsch's Gabriel," 6th International Conference on Adoption and Culture, Alliance for the Study of Alliance and Culture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Oct. 2016.
  • “Romanticism and Adoption,” Special Session on “Romantic Genealogies of Kinship,” Modern Language Association, Austin TX, Jan. 2016.
  • "'Motherhood in a Safari Suit': Mapping Violence in A Gate at the Stairs and the Romantic History of Mad Mary Lamb," ASAC 2012, Claremont Colleges.
  • "Dorothy's Demons in Julien Temple's Pandemonium" MLA, Los Angeles, Jan. 2011.
  • "Wordsworth, the Lives of Poets, and Print Culture," NASSR,Vancouver, Aug. 2010.
  • "The 'Delicate Investigation,' State Censorship, and Adoption Narrative," Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture, Boston (MIT), May 2010.
  • "Austen and Adoption," New Directions in Austen Studies, Chawton, UK, July 2009.
  • "Romanticism, Skepticism, and Adoption," NASSR 2009, Duke Univ., May 2009.
  • "Romanticism and Adoption: The Case of Emma Isola," NASSR 2008, Toronto.
  • "Austen, Cavell, and the Ordinary," MLA 2006, Philadelphia.
  • "Raymond Williams and Romanticism," MLA 2005, Washington.
  • "The Family Romance of Willy Austin," NASSR 2005, Montreal.
  • "Romanticism, Adoption, and Cosmopolitanism," NASSR 2004, Boulder.
  • "'In the Place of a Parent': Jane Austen and Adoption," BWWC 2004, Athens, GA.
  • "Romanticism and Adoption," NASSR 2003, New York.

TEACHING AWARDS

  • Teaching Incentive Program (TIP) Award, Florida State University, 1999.
  • Outstanding Teaching Award, South Atlantic Association of Departments of English (SAADE), 1998.
  • University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Florida State University, 1996.
  • University Teaching Award, Florida State University, 1995.
  • Teaching Incentive Program (TIP) Award, Florida State University, 1995.
  • University Teaching Award, Florida State University, 1988.
  • The Earl Hartsell Teaching Award, Dept. of English, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1982.
Publications By This Author
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