Professor
- thomashillard@boisestate.edu
- Voicemail: (208) 426-2991
- LA 234
Dr. Hillard joined the faculty at Boise State University in 2007, after earning his PhD at the University of Arizona. He regularly teaches courses on American literature, especially in the early periods, with a particular emphasis on Gothic literature as well as environmental literary studies. His current research and scholarship explores the development of Gothic fiction in the early United States, and he is working on several related textual editing, bibliographical, and book history projects.
Recent publications include articles on Sally Sayward Wood and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as contributions to Studies in American Fiction and Gothic Nature Journal. He has published widely on the “ecogothic,” and he co-edited (with Amy T. Hamilton) the book of essays Before the West Was West: Critical Essays on Pre-1800 Literature of the American Frontiers (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). From 2011-2018, he served as Book Review Editor for the Oxford University Press journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, as well as co-editor for the textual recovery section of American Gothic Studies, the new journal of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic.
Education
- Ph.D., English, University of Arizona
- M.A., English, Literature and Environment, University of Nevada
- B.A., English, Boise State University
Interests
Early American and 19th-century American literature, Gothic literature, textual editing and bibliographical studies, environmental literary studies
Recent Publications
- “Afterword: On Exhuming an Early American Ecogothic.” Studies in American Fiction 50.1-2 (2023): 275-85. [invited “Afterword” for a special issue on “Ecogothic”]
- “Sally Wood of Maine: America’s First Female Gothic Novelist.” Historic New England 24.2 (Fall 2023): 24-27
- “Burying the Body: Pandemic and Public Health in Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables.” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 47.1 (2021) 1-25.
- “Gothic Nature Revisited: Reflections on the Gothic of Ecocriticism.” Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the Ecogothic 1 (2019): 21-33.
- “‘Perverse Nature’: Anxieties of Animality and Environment in Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly.” Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Ed. Dawn Keetley and Matthew Wynn Sivils. New York: Routledge, 2017. 21-36
Courses
- ENGL 275 Methods of Literary Studies
- ENGL 277 Survey of American Literature I
- ENGL 375 Early American Literature
- ENGL 377 American Renaissance
- ENGL 394 Literature and Environment
- ENGL 424 Advanced Seminar: American Gothic Literature
- ENGL 430: Ghost Stories and Gothic Fictions
- ENGL 498 Capstone in Literary Studies
- ENGL 500 Research Methods in Literary Studies
- ENGL 510 Major Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- ENGL 530 Literary Period: American Gothic Literature