Hearty congratulations to Assistant Professor Dr. Thomas Howard on the recent publication of his work. In recent months, Professor Howard has had not one, not two, but three articles published in a number of different academic journals.

First, “Anesthetic Reading: Ether, Nitrous Oxide, and Nineteenth-Century Interpretation” (Winner of the 2025 Ralph Cohen Prize) was published in the spring 2026 issue of New Literary History. This article argues that ether and nitrous oxide formed the basis of a distinctive interpretive practice in the nineteenth century, demonstrating how reading “under the influence” brought the affective resonances of a text to the fore while disrupting logical thinking, opening alternative reading paths.

To read this award-winning essay, visit here.

Second, “Goethe, Darwin, and the Spiral Tendency of Dickinson’s Letters” was published in a special issue of The Emily Dickinson Journal. This essay reads Emily Dickinson’s letter-poems as botanical forms: living, mobile, and governed by circulation. It argues that Dickinson’s correspondence develops through irregular, recursive motions analogous to vegetal movement, and demonstrates how letters function less as preserved specimens than as living media that grow through transfer and readerly uptake.

To read this work, visit here.

Finally, his essay “Aphoristic Transcendentalism: Baconian Science and Centrifugal Inquiry in Emerson and Thoreau” was published by The New England Quarterly. This work argues that the aphoristic style of Emerson and Thoreau is inseparable from their scientific practice. Drawing on Francis Bacon’s vision of the aphorism as seed-like and perpetually generative, the Transcendentalists developed an open-ended aphoristic mode as a democratic alternative to the increasing professionalization of nineteenth-century science.

To read more about this article, visit here.

Congratulations, Professor Howard!