Office Hours

  • Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m., and by appointment
 

Interests

  • Victorian Literature
  • Writing
  • Digital Humanities
 

Paul Schacht

Professor and Chair of

English

Welles 219B
1 College Circle
Geneseo, NY 14454
585-245-5141
schacht@geneseo.edu

Paul Schacht

Paul Schacht has been a member of the Geneseo faculty since 1985.

Faculty Information

Education

  • Ph.D., Stanford University
  • A.B., University of Michigan

Research Interests

My research interests are in Victorian literature and digital humanities. I'm director of Digital Thoreau, an effort in collaboration with the Thoreau Society and the Walden Woods Project to promote scholarly and public engagement with the works of Henry David Thoreau. You can watch a two-minute video explanation of Digital Thoreau here.

Publications

  • "In Pursuit of Pickwick's Hat: Dickens and the Epistemology of Utilitarianism," Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009)
  • "Rowing Alone: Technology and Democracy in the Humanities Classroom," International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society 4 (2008), 61-68.
  • "The Collaborative Writing Project," in Using Wiki in Education, ed. Stewart L. Mader
     

    Awards and Honors

    • Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1997
    • Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Faculty Service, 2007
My Classes

Engl 170:
The Practice of Criticism

    View syllabus
    Introduction to the interpretation and analysis of literature, as well as to the abstract principles and assumptions that underlie all efforts to represent the meaning, structure, and value of texts. In classroom discussions and short essay assignments, students undertake critical readings of texts from a variety of genres (poetry, novel, drama, etc.), while examining how critical controversy emerges from the different theoretical commitments and preconceptions of readers. This course is a prerequisite for any 300-level English literature course taken for the English major or concentration.