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Elisa New

Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - - American poetry
  • - - American Literature - 1900
  • - - Religion and Literature
  • - - Jewish Literature

Major works

  • The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
  • The Line's Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight (Harvard University Press, 1999)
  • Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore (2009)
  • New England Beyond Criticism: In Defense of America's First Literature (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)
  • How to Read American Poetry (forthcoming from Wiley Blackwell)

About me

Elisa New is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University where she teaches classic American literature from Anne Bradstreet through Marilynne Robinson and from the Puritans to the present day. She is the author of New England Beyond Criticism: In Defense of America’s First Literature (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1992) _The Lines Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight _(Harvard University Press, 1999) and Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore (2009). _She also has a companion book to the Poetry in America project, _How To Read American Poetry (2017-18), forthcoming from Wiley Blackwell.