Cody Marrs

Cody Marrs, Professor of English at the University of Georgia, is a scholar of American literature. He is one of the co-editors of The Norton Anthology of American Literature and the lead editor for Volume B (1820-1865).

His research is inspired by a single, animating question: How might we read 19th-century American literature without imposing on it the assumptions and beliefs of the 21st century? To answer this question, he reconstructs 19th-century writers’ intellectual influences, aesthetic concerns, and historical circumstances. This has led him to write about topics ranging from problems with periodization (and the ways in which American literature does not fit neatly into standard historical periods) to nineteenth-century spirituality and aesthetics, in order to help the field develop less anachronistic ways of understanding the literary past. 

His books include Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Long Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2015); The New Melville Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Timelines of American Literature, co-edited with Christopher Hager (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019); Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition: The Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2022); American Literature in Transition, 1851-1877 (Cambridge University Press, 2022); Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things (Oxford University Press, 2023); The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B: 1820-1865, 11th edition (W.W. Norton, 2027); The Routledge Companion to Herman Melville, co-edited with Brian Yothers (under contract with Routledge); and The Guide to Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press). His work has also appeared in journals such as American Literary Realism, and in edited volumes such as The New Emily Dickinson Studies and The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville. 

He is a winner of the Hennig Cohen Prize in Melville Studies, the Montaigne Medal, and UGA's Presidential Early Career Award, as well as fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, and the Willson Center for the Humanities at UGA. He has served on the Advisory Council for the American Literature Society, and as Chair of the selection committee for the 1921 Prize, which is awarded annually to the best article in American literary studies. He currently serves on the editorial boards for J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, and Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies.

 

 

Books:

(Author) The Guide to Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press)

(Co-Editor) The Routledge Companion to Herman Melville (under contract with Routledge)

(Editor) The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 11th Edition, Volume B: 1820-1865 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2027).

(Author) Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

(Editor) Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, Vol. 3: 1851-1877 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

(Author) Not Even Past: The Stories We Keep Telling About the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

(Co-Editor) Timelines of American Literature, co-edited with Christopher Hager (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).

(Editor) The New Melville Studies (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

(Author) Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Long Civil War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Edited Series:

General Editor for Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, 4 Vols. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Guest Editor:

Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. Special Issue on "Late Melvilles," 18.3 (October 2016).

Articles and Book Chapters:

"American Literature, 1820-1865," in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 11th Edition, Volume B: 1820-1865 (forthcoming)

“Battle-Pieces and the Problem of Beauty,” in The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville, eds. Jennifer Greiman and Michael Jonik (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 477-488.

“Religion at Sea,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 26.2 (June 2024): 25-39. 

"The Front Line in American War Literature," French Review of American Studies 178.1 (2024): 120-133.

"Realism and Reconstruction: A Comparative Perspective," American Literary Realism 55.3 (Spring 2023): 189-197.

"The War Story," in The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story, eds. Gavin Jones and Michael Collins (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 117-130.

"The Future of Civil War and Reconstruction Literature," in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction, eds. Kathleen Diffley and Coleman Hutchison (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 284-294.

"Introduction: The System of American Literature, 1851-1877," in Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, Vol. 3 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 1-9.

“Frederick Douglass and the ‘Moral Chemistry of the Universe,’” in Crossings in Nineteenth-Century American Culture, ed. Edward Sugden (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), 19-28.

"The Civil War in African American Memory," in African American Literature in Transition, 1865-1880, eds. Eric Gardner and Joycelyn Moody (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 213-232.

“Frederick Douglass in 1848,” in the Norton Critical Edition of My Bondage and My Freedom, eds. Nicholas Bromell and Blake Gilpin (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020).

"1866 and After: Jane Jackson, Herman Melville, and the Literature of Emancipation," in Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image, eds. Kathleen Diffley and Benjamin Fagan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019), 219-228.

“Introduction,” co-authored with Christopher Hager, in Timelines of American Literature, eds. Cody Marrs and Christopher Hager (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 1-9.

"Dickinson's Physics," in The New Emily Dickinson Studies, ed. Michelle Kohler (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 155-167.

“Introduction: Melville Studies, Old and New," In The New Melville Studies, ed. Cody Marrs (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1-10.

“Drum-Taps and the Chaos of War,” in This Mighty Convulsion: Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War, eds. Christopher Sten and Tyler Hoffman (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019), 119-134.

"Three Theses on Reconstruction," American Literary History 30.3 (Fall 2018): 407-428.

"Dickinson in the Anthropocene," ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 63.2 (2017): 201-225.

"Introduction: Late Melvilles," Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 18.3 (October 2016): 1-10.

"Afterword: Archiving the War," co-authored with Christopher Hager, in A History of American Civil War Literature, ed. Coleman Hutchison (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 331-342.

"Against 1865: Reperiodizing the Nineteenth Century," co-authored with Christopher Hager, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 1.2 (Fall 2013): 259-284. 

"Frederick Douglass in 1848," American Literature 85.3 (September 2013): 447-473. 

"Clarel and the American Centennial," Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 13.3 (October 2011): 98-114.

"Whitman's Latencies: Hegel and the Politics of Time in Leaves of Grass," Arizona Quarterly 67.1 (Spring 2011): 47-72.

"A Wayward Art: Battle-Pieces and Melville's Poetic Turn," American Literature 82.1 (March 2010): 91–119. (Awarded the Hennig Cohen Prize for the best essay or chapter in Melville studies.)