James Seaton (professor)

James Everett Seaton is a Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University.

James Seaton was born in Iowa, received B. A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and .earned a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature with a major in Greek and Latin from the University of Iowa. He is a professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University, where he has taught since 1971. Seaton is married to playwright Sandra Seaton.

James Seaton has written or edited four books and published over 100 articles. He is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard, and his essays and reviews have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Hudson Review, The American Scholar (magazine), Yale Journal of Law and Humanities [1], First Things, Modern Age, The University Bookman [2], The Review of Metaphysics [3] and The Journal of the History of Ideas [4], and many other academic and non-academic publications.

Books Written or Edited by Seaton

• The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana. Edited and with an introduction by James Seaton, with essays by James Seaton, Wilfred McClay, John Lachs, and Roger Kimball. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
• Beyond Cheering and Bashing: New Perspectives on The Closing of the American Mind. Edited by William K. Buckley and James Seaton. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green SU Popular Press, 1992.
• A Reading of Vergil's Georgics. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1983.

Seaton's Contributions to Books

• Introduction to Santayana Edition volume of Three Philosophical Poets from MIT Press. Forthcoming.
• “George Santayana as a Cultural Critic.” Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana. Ed. Matthew Caleb Flamm and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroňski. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 111-20.
• “Affirming the Principle.” Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. Ed. Lucas E. Morel. Lexington, Kentucky: UP of Kentucky, 2004. 22-36.
• “Henry James's The Princess Casamassima: Revolution and the Preservation of Culture.” The Moral of the Story: Literature and Public Ethics. ed. Henry T. Edmondson III. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000. 15-25.
• "The Beauty of Middle‑Class Virtue: Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! The Moral of the Story: Literature and Public Ethics. ed. Henry T. Edmondson III. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000. 193-202.
• "Afterword: Midwestern Muckrakers." Exploring the Midwestern Literary Imagination: Essays in Honor of David D. Anderson. Ed. Marcia Noe. Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, 1993. 203-208.
• "The Humanities and Cultural Criticism: The Example of Ralph Ellison." Rejuvenating the Humanities. Ed. Ray Browne and Marshall Fishwick. Bowling Green: Bowling Green SU popular P, 1992. 101-108.
• "Innocence Regained; the Career of Leslie Fiedler." Politics and the Muse: Studies in the Politics of Recent American Literature Ed. Adam J. Sorkin. Bowling Green: Bowling Green SU Popular P, 1989. 93-110.