prof. dr. J.T.J. Bak (Hans)

Hans Bak (1952) is emeritus professor of American Literature and American Studies at Raboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he directed the American Studies program from 1996-2008. He is the author of Malcolm Cowley: The Formative Years (U of Georgia P, 1993; American Studies Network European Book Prize 1994) and the editor of The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987 (Harvard UP, 2014); he is now writing a full-fledged biography of Cowley. Editor of a.o. Multiculturalism and the Canon of American Culture (1993); (with Walter Hoelbling) ‘Nature’s Nation’ Revisited: American Concepts of Nature from Wonder to Ecological Crisis (2003); First Nations of North America: Politics and Representation (2005); and (with Céline Mansanti) Transatlantic Intellectual Networks, 1914-1964 (2019). His articles on 20th- and 21st-century American and Canadian fiction, drama, biography, multiculturalism, and the discipline of American Studies, have appeared in European and American journals. Besides essays on Malcolm Cowley, these include articles on Tim O’Brien, David Rabe, Louis Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, James Welch, Sherman Alexie, LeAnne Howe, Chang-Rae Lee, Bharati Mukherjee, Carol Shields, Wayne Johnston, Michael Ondaatje, Lawrence Hill, Tomson Highway, Alex Colville and Dorothy Day. Research interests include contemporary American and Canadian literature (Native American/ First Nations literatures); Euro-American modernism & transatlantic cultural mobility; instruments of culture (periodicals, publishers and “middlemen” of letters); the reception of North American literature and culture in Europe. He was President of the Netherlands American Studies Association (1990-2000) and the Association for Canadian Studies in the Netherlands (2000-2003), Treasurer of the European Association for American Studies (2000-2004), and served on the International Committee of the American Studies Association.