Dana D. Nelson
| Dana D. Nelson | |
|---|---|
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| Born | United States |
| Residence | Nashville, Tennessee, United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Indiana University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Bad for Democracy (2008) |
| Awards | The Word in Black and White named Outstanding Academic Book of 1992–1993 by Choice |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | English, American literature, Politics |
| Institutions | Vanderbilt University |
Dana D. Nelson is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University and a prominent progressive advocate for citizenship and democracy. She is notable for her criticism—in her books such as Bad for Democracy—of excessive presidential power and for exposing a tendency by Americans towards presidentialism, which she defines as the people's neglect of basic citizenship duties while hoping the president will solve most problems. Her scholarship focuses on early American literature relating to citizenship and democratic government.
Nelson earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and master's (1986) and doctoral degrees (1989) from Michigan State University. She was associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky in 1998. Nelson's The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638–1867 was named the "an Outstanding Academic Book of 1992–1993 by Choice." The book explored how eleven "Anglo-American authors constructed 'race'" including a study of The Last of the Mohicans and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and earned positive reviews.
She taught at the University of Kentucky, Duke University, the University of Washington, and Louisiana State University. In 2006, she co-edited with Russ Castronovo a collection of essays entitled Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. One reviewer described the effort as an "ambitious, multi-disciplinary effort to make the subjective turn by warning against the danger of reducing democracy to 'an exclusively moral category that is no longer connected with political, economic, or social categories.'" In 2007, she wrote an essay entitled "Democracy in Theory" in the journal of American Literary History. She edited 19th century abolitionist Lydia Marie Child's A Romance of the Republic in 2003.
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