Thomas W. Howard is a literary scholar specializing in nineteenth-century American and transatlantic literature, literature and science, and the environmental humanities. He received his PhD in English and American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 2023. In addition to teaching in CCI, he is dually appointed in the Department of American Culture and Literature.
Dr. Howard’s current book project, Aphoristic Science: Ecology, Psychology, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature, examines a stream of speculative, aphoristic writing among the American Transcendentalists and Pragmatists. Among these science-minded writers, the aphorism proved particularly generative for engaging with fields developing out of natural philosophy into more specialized disciplines like ecology and psychology. In letters, journals, letters, and lectures, writers from Ralph Waldo Emerson to W. E. B. Du Bois wield the aphoristic mode, transforming readers into collaborators by kindling interest and participation in new scientific fields. Dr. Howard’s work has appeared in Nineteenth-Century Literature, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and elsewhere. In 2025, he was awarded the Ralph Cohen Prize from New Literary History.
Dr. Howard is also President-Elect for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and Associate Editor for The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies. More information may be found on his website.