Samuel Baker
Associate Professor — Ph.D., 2001, University of Chicago
Contact
- E-mail: sebaker@austin.utexas.edu
- Phone: 471-8389
- Office: CAL 308
- Office Hours: T TH 3:00-4:30
- Campus Mail Code: B5000
Biography
In his just-published book, Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture (http://amzn.to/d2SDMV), Professor Baker argues that the Romantic idea of universal culture took shape within imaginative horizons fundamentally shaped by Britain’s maritime-imperial aspirations. Dr. Baker is also writing a series of essays on ethical dispositions in the Romantic novel, tracking how stoicism and skepticism, among other attitudes, ceased to refer to specific philosophical schools and began to be seen as general psychological orientations.
Before returning to academia to take his Ph.D., Professor Baker worked as a journalist and book reviewer, as well as in museums and libraries. These experiences left him something of a generalist, and he maintains broad interests in literature and art, in film and media studies, and in politics. His current enthusiasms include works by Samuel Prout, Elizabeth Bishop, and Raul Ruiz. On a more conceptual level, he is preoccupied by the artistic evocation of place, especially as it intersects with the shaping of collective and individual subjectivity; by ethical theory, especially in relation to politics and gender and sexuality; and by problems in the aesthetics and sociology of representation.
