Paul Lewis
Professor Emeritus
Paul Lewis
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S449
Telephone: 617-552-3710
Email: lewisp@bc.edu
Education
- A.B., City College of New York
- M.A., University of Manitoba
- Ph.D., University of New Hampshire
Research Interests
Literary Boston; American Humor Since 1980; American Literature: 1790-1860; Gothic Fiction
Department
Biography
Paul Lewis is an Americanist, a past president of the Poe Studies Association, the curator of exhibitions on literary Boston, and the neologist who coined the word “Frankenfood.” The author of Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict, Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature, and A Is for Asteroids, Z Is for Zombies: A Bedtime Book about the Coming Apocalypse, Lewis led the Boston Poems Project and edited The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789-1820, for the University Press of New England. As the BOD chair of the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston, Inc., Lewis worked with others to celebrate Poe in the city of his birth by having a square at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street South dedicated to Poe in 2010 and then installing a statue of Poe in it in 2014. In addition to articles and book chapters on American literature, controversial humor, and literary Boston, Lewis has published opinion, humor, and feature pieces in such places as the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Old House, National Post (Canada), Tikkun, and Haaretz (Israel).
Selected Publications
Quothing “The Raven”: The First Responses to America’s Most Famous Poem, Including Twenty-Nine Parodies Published During Poe’s Lifetime, forthcoming from Mercer University Press in 2026.
“‘Nauseous Flattery’ and ‘Austere Virtues’: Higginson’s Bostonian View of Poe,” ESQ 70:2-4 (2024): 297-317.
"How is a Rebus Like a Time Machine?" Early American Literature 58:2 (2023): 423-32.
"The First Caricature of Poe Reconsidered," Edgar Allan Poe Review 23:2 (2022): 228-31; and "Letter to the Editor," Edgar Allan Poe Review 24:1 (2023): 27-128.
"'The Raven': Imitated, Admired, and Sometimes Mocked," Edgar Allan Poe Review 22:2 (Autumn 2021): 274-311.
"Edgar Allan Poe’s Writings about Plagues and How They Relate to the Current Pandemic," Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2020.
“‘The mystery which binds me still’: Poe’s Traumatic, Complex, and Fertile Bereavement,” Edgar Allan Poe Review 20: 2 (Autumn 2019): 219-38.
“‘Lines Written by a Lady’: "Judith Sargent Murray and a Mystery of Feminist Authorship,” New England Quarterly XCII:4 (December 2019): 615-32.
“Teaching the Terrible; Or, Taking William Charles White’s Orlando: Or Parental Persecution, A Tragedy, to School,” [Provocation essay], Early American Literature, 54:3 (2019): 621-32.
"Hiding on Boston Common Since the 19th Century: The tell-tale face of Edgar Allan Poe," Boston Globe, December 26, 2019.
“When joking becomes 'rage-icule’: Donald Trump and the stupidity of ridicule,” Chicago Tribune, December 9, 2019.
“The World is a Scary Place: What Do We Tell the Kids? Boston Globe Magazine, May 12, 2019.
“Why is Boston’s most important literary site a food court?" Boston Globe Magazine, October 14, 2018.
A is for Asteroids, Z is for Zombies: A Bedtime Book about the Coming Apocalypse, Kenneth Lamug, Illustrator, Andrews McMeel, 2017. amazon.com Boston Globe
"Waiting to Be Found: The Citizen Poets of Philadelphia and New York," Early American Literature 52:3(2017): 679–90.
Editor, The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789—1820, University Press of New England, 2016. NPR Sunday Edition Boston Globe West
Curator, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frederick Douglass: Texts and Contexts, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, October 15, 2015–January 24, 2016.
"Who Let 'The Pigs' Out? Or Why Edgar Allan Poe Wouldn't, or Couldn't, or Almost Certainly Didn't Write the Most Snarky American Poem of 1835," New England Quarterly, March 2015: 126–40.
Open Source with Christopher Lydon (WBUR) program on Poe and Boston, October 27, 2014.
Radio Boston (WBUR) interview on the Poe statue project, April 16, 2014.
Curator, Forgotten Chapters of Boston's Literary History, an exhibition at the Boston Public Library and Massachusetts Historical Society, March 28-July 30, 2012.
“Longfellow’s Serenity and Poe’s Prediction: An Antebellum Turning Point,” New England Quarterly 86:1 (March 2012): 144-158. Received the James Gargano award for the best article on Poe published in 2012.
“The Raven in the Frog Pond: Edgar Allan Poe and the City of Boston,” in Born in the U.S.A.: Birth and Commemoration in American Public Memory, ed. Seth C. Bruggeman, University of Massachusetts Press, Public History in Historical Perspective Series, 2012, 216-39 (co-authored).
"The Great, the Good, and the Deliciously Awful: Why Boston Needs a Literary Trail," Boston Globe, April 1, 2012, K,12.
“What’s So Funny about a Dead Terrorist? Toward an Ethics of Humor for the Digital Age,” in A Decade of Dark Humor: Humor, Irony, and Post-9/11 Politics, ed. Ted Gournelos and Viveca Greene, University of Mississippi Press, 2011, 214-32.
"Quoth the Detective: Edgar Allan Poe’s Case against the Boston Literati," Boston Globe, March 6, 2011.
WGBH Radio interview on Poe and Boston, November 25, 2011.
Great Poe Debate, Free Library of Philadelphia, January 13, 2009 [Podcast]
Editor and Participant, “The Muhammad Cartoons and Humor Research” in HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 21-1 (2008): 1-46.
"(Mis)reading Borat: The Risks of Irony in the Digital Age, Electronic Journal of Communication 18:2, 3, & 4 (2008).
"Stephen Colbert, Character and Candidate" (op-ed), Providence Journal, October 31, 2007.
"Beyond Empathy: Sarah Silverman and the Limits of Comedy," Tikkun, September-October 2007, 88-89.
Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict, University of Chicago Press, 2006.
"Painful Laughter: The Collapse of Humor in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories," in The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays, ed. Charles L. P. Silet, Scarecrow Press, 2006.
"And divided we laugh: the year in humor," Boston Globe, December 29, 2006.
"Meanwhile: Laughing all the way to the war," International Herald Tribune, December 8, 2006.
"Funny Thing About Elections," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 2006.
"A 'Wild' and 'Homely' Narrative: Resisting Argument in 'The Black Cat'" Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 35 (2002):1-14.
"Hamlet: A Mature Reading," Washington Post, February 26, 1997.
"The Sweet Cycle: From Blossom to Berry to Jam," New York Times, September 23, 1992.
Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature, State University of New York Press, 1989.
“Poe’s Humor: A Psychological Analysis, Studies in Short Fiction 26:4 (Fall 1989): 531-46.
“Joke and Anti-joke: Three Jews and a Blindfold, Journal of Popular Culture 21:1 (Summer 1987): 63-73.
"Disaster as a Laughing Matter," Chicago Tribune, March 26, 1986.
“Melville’s Pierre and the Psychology of Incongruity, Studies in the Novel 15:3 (Fall 1983): 183-201.
“Mysterious Laughter: Humor and Fear in Gothic Fiction,” GENRE XIV:3 (Fall 1981): 309-27.
“Life by Water: Characterization and Salvation in ‘The Waste Land,”’ Mosaic XI:4 (Summer 1978): 81-90.