Mark Bauerlein


Mark Weightman Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University and senior editor of First Things journal. He serves, in addition, as a visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college in Savannah.

Early life and education

Bauerlein earned his doctorate in English from UCLA in 1988, having completed a thesis on poet Walt Whitman under the supervision of Joseph N. Riddel.

Career

Bauerlein has taught at Emory University since 1989. Between 2003 and 2005, he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts, serving as the director of the Office of Research and Analysis. While there, Bauerlein contributed to an NEA study, "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America".

Work

Bauerlein's books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy and The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief. He is also the author of the 2008 book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future , which won the Nautilus Book Award.
Bauerlein explains how his experience as a teacher led to his writing of The Dumbest Generation:
Apart from his scholarly work, he publishes in popular periodicals such as Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and The Times Literary Supplement.

Personal life

In 2012, Bauerlein announced his conversion to Catholicism. He has self-described himself as an "educational conservative", while he socially and politically identifies as being "pretty liberal and libertarian", according to an interview conducted by Reason magazine. He endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Bauerlein has an identical twin brother.

List of works

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