Richard Slotkin

Richard Slotkin (born 1942) is a cultural critic and historian. He is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and in 2010 is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Slotkin writes novels alongside his historical research, and uses the process of writing the novels to clarify and refine his historical work.

Education and Career

Slotkin received his BA from Brooklyn College, his MAAE from Wesleyan University and his PhD from Brown University. He started teaching at Wesleyan University in 1966 and helped establish the school's American studies and film studies program.

Awards

Regeneration Through Violence received the Albert Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association as the Best Book in American History (1973) and was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 1974.

Gunfighter Nation was a National Book Award Finalist in 1993.

In 1995 he received the Mary C. Turpie Award of the American Studies Association for his contributions to teaching and program-building.

His novel, Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln, won the 2000 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction.

Works

• Regeneration Through Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Wesleyan University Press, 1973)
• The Fatal Environment: the myth of the frontier in the age of industrialization, 1800-1890, (Atheneum, 1985)
• Gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America (Atheneum, 1992)
• Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality
• The Crater: A Novel of the Civil War
• The Return of Henry Starr
• Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln
• No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864