Shirley Samuels is professor of English and American Studies and the chair of the History of Art Department at Cornell University.  Previously, she served as the director of Women’s Studies at Cornell.  She has held appointments at the University of Delaware, Brandeis University, and Princeton University.  Samuels has taught extensively in the area of American literary studies.  Her courses, writing, and academic talks have explored the nature of sentiment, romance, and iconography in American literature. Samuels is the author of numerous books, articles and reviews.  These include Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2004) and a Companion to American Fiction, 1780-1865 (editor). (Blackwell, 2004, Paperback 2007).  She has also written Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation (Oxford University Press, 1996) and edited The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1992). She is now at work on an anthology of American literature from 1800-1865.