678-839-6144
perben@westga07tWTNBy2ct383mmM1wYcBscncNOAof26rP5XqGmRWixMOLfKZrKYr8lAl3V.edu

Boyd Building - Room 316
Office Hours
Spring 2024: MON/WED 10:00AM-12:00PM AND 3:00-4:30PM (AT THE OFFICE);
TUE/THU—ONLINE BY APPOINTMENT VIA GOOGLE MEET.
(Please email me for appointments.)

Download curriculum vitae for Patrick Erben, Ph.D. in PDF
Patrick Erben, Ph.D.

I am a member of the Advisory Committee of the Society of Early Americanists as the Immediate Past President, and I serve on the editorial board of the journal Early American Literature. In these roles, I will continue fostering the work I began when I organized the 2021 Biennial Conference of the SEA--to highlight and support diverse scholars, teachers, students, and programs and thus make the field of early American studies more inclusive.  I am also a new Leadership Fellow (2022-23) in the College of Arts, Culture, and Scientific Inquiry at UWG, which provides training and experience for rising leaders in higher education. 

A native of Germany, I attended Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz and graduated with an M.A. in American Studies in 1997 and completed my Ph.D. at Emory University in 2003. During a two-year NEH fellowship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, I researched and wrote my first monograph, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (University of North Carolina Press, 2012, 2017 paperback). A Harmony of the Spirits demonstrates that translation served as a practical tool and as a spiritual ideal for discovering and establishing links between seemingly incoherent languages, religious doctrines, genders, and ethnicities. My teaching interests lie in the multilingual beginnings of early American literature, language, and culture (colonial to 1865), as well as the intersections between religion and sexuality. I published the first scholarly edition of the writings of Francis Daniel Pastorius, the founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania (the first German settlement in North America), with Penn State University Press, entitled The Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader: Writings by an Early American Polymath. My next monograph project will focus on the German Pietist influences on major works in early American literature, a project for which I just completed a research fellowship with the American Antiquarian Society. With my colleague Rebecca Harrison, I am currently co-editing a collection of scholarly essays entitled Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present, which is under contract with Edinburgh University Press. 

Currently, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in early American literature, publishing and editing, as well as world literature at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton. 

  • M.A., American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg Univ., 1997
  • Ph.D., English, Emory University, 2003

Spring 2024 Sections

Fall 2023 Sections

Summer 2023 Sections

Spring 2023 Sections

Fall 2022 Sections

Summer 2022 Sections

Spring 2022 Sections

Fall 2021 Sections

Summer 2021 Sections

Spring 2021 Sections

Fall 2020 Sections

Summer 2020 Sections

  • ENGL-2110 (WorldLit-NatureOfGood&Evil) Section: E01

Fall 2019 Sections

  • ENGL-2111 (World Literature I) Section: 83G
  • ENGL-4003 (AmLitI:Romanticism) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-4384 (SeniorSeminar:SavageDelight) Section: 02W
  • ENGL-5003 (Am Lit I: ROM) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Summer 2019 Sections

  • ENGL-4003 (AmLitI:EarlyAmRhapsody) Section: 1DW
  • ENGL-5003 (Studies in American Lit. I) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Spring 2019 Sections

  • ENGL-2111 (World Literature I) Section: 81G
  • ENGL-4109 (Film as Lit) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-4405 (Publishing and Editing) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-5109 (Film as Lit) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Fall 2018 Sections

  • XIDS-2100 (Arts and Ideas: Topic TBA) Section: 01
  • ENGL-4003 (Am Lit I: Colonial) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-5003 (Am Lit I: Colonial) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Summer 2018 Sections

  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Spring 2018 Sections

  • XIDS-2100 (Arts and Ideas-TBD) Section: 02
  • ENGL-2130 (American Literature-Honors) Section: 25H
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Fall 2017 Sections

  • ENGL-2130 (American Literature) Section: 02
  • ENGL-4384 (Senior Seminar) Section: 02W
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Summer 2017 Sections

  • ENGL-6110 (Am Lit I-ArchivalResearch) Section: E01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Spring 2017 Sections

  • ENGL-2130 (American Literature) Section: 01
  • ENGL-4003 (American Lit I-Colonial) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-5003 (American Lit. I: Colonial) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Fall 2016 Sections

  • ENGL-2110 (World Literature) Section: 01
  • ENGL-4003 (Studies in American Lit. I) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-5003 (Studies in American Lit. I) Section: 01
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Summer 2016 Sections

  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Spring 2016 Sections

  • ENGL-3000 (Research and Methodology) Section: 02W
  • ENGL-4109 (Film as Literature) Section: 02W
  • ENGL-5109 (Film as Literature) Section: 02
  • ENGL-6399 (Thesis) Section: 01

Fall 2015 Sections

  • ENGL-2110 (World Literature-HONORS) Section: 25H

Summer 2015 Sections

  • ENGL-1102 (English Composition II) Section: 01

Spring 2015 Sections

  • ENGL-2110 (World Literature) Section: 02
  • ENGL-4106 (Studies in Genre-Travel Lit) Section: 02W
  • ENGL-4385 (Special Topics*) Section: 01W
  • ENGL-5106 (Studies in Genre-Travel Lit) Section: 02
  • ENGL-5385 (Special Topics*) Section: 01

Babel of the Atlantic. Ed. Bethany Wiggin. The Pennsylvania State University Press, May 2019. [View Publication External Resource]

MONOGRAPH: _A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). [View Publication External Resource]

TEXTUAL EDITION: A Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader. Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. [View Publication External Resource]

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES:

Re-Discovering the German-Language Literature of Colonial America. In: _A Peculiar Mixture: German-Speaking People in the Greater Mid-Atlantic Region from 1709 to the Revolution_, eds. Oliver Scheiding and Jan Stievermann (forthcoming with Penn State UP)

The Translingual Archive. In: _Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives._ MLA Options for Teaching Series. Eds. Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Frederick Moulton. (Forthcoming: MLA, 2012).

Book of Suffering, Suffering Book: The Mennonite Martyrs Mirror and the Translation of Martyrdom in Colonial Pennsylvania [View Publication External Resource]

Educating Germans in Colonial Pennsylvania [View Publication External Resource]

Promoting Pennsylvania: Penn, Pastorius, and the Creation of a Transnational Community. _Resources for American Literary Study 29_ (2003-2004; published 2005): 25-65.

Honey-Combs and Paper-Hives: Positioning Francis Daniel Pastorius Manuscript Writings in Early Pennsylvania [View Publication External Resource]