Timothy Peltason

Timothy Peltason is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English at Wellesley College. He joined the faculty in 1977 and teaches courses in Victorian and Modern literature, contemporary American literature, and Shakespeare. He has served several terms as Chair of the Department of English and is currently the faculty Director of the Newhouse Center for the Humanities.

Professor Peltason received his A.B. degree from Harvard College in 1972 and, after spending a year at King's College, Cambridge University, received both his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in 1974 and 1977, respectively.

Professor Peltason is the author of a book on Tennyson, Reading in Memoriam (Princeton University Press, 1986) and is the editor of Matthew Arnold: Selected Poems (Viking-Penguin, 1994). He has delivered public lectures on Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Oscar Wilde, and contemporary criticism and has contributed articles to numerous literary journals. Among his recent publications are a sequence of five monograph-length critical commentaries on Shakespeare (Web-published by Digital Learning Interactive) and “The Uncommon Pursuit: Literary Judgment in the Academy” (Literary Imagination, Fall 2004).

Tim Peltason was raised in Urbana, Illinois and Newport Beach, California and now makes his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife, Jan Harris, a clinical psychologist. His older daughter, Jody, is a teacher in the Washington, D.C public school system; his younger daughter, Emily, is a student at Stanford University.

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Profile last updated: 8/04