John Hay is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he specializes in nineteenth-century American literature. His scholarly interests also include the history of science, literary realism, narratology, and intellectual history. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, he received a B.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. At UNLV, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature (poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction), the Enlightenment, the novel, and literary theory and criticism.
Prof. Hay’s first book, Postapocalyptic Fantasies in Antebellum American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2017), examines the ways in which U.S. writers imagined the new nation’s explosive potential. He is the editor of Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His essays and articles have appeared in the New England Quarterly, Early American Literature, ESQ, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Philosophy and Literature, Literature in the Early American Republic, The Oxford Handbook of Jack London, and Science Fiction Film & Television. He has also authored reviews for academic venues such as Studies in American Naturalism, MELUS, Configurations, the Journal of the Early Republic, and ALH Online Review, and for popular venues including The Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and Desert Companion. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Las Vegas Review of Books.
Prof. Hay has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Huntington Library.
John Hay 