Blevin Shelnutt

Blevin Shelnutt is a PhD Candidate in English and American Literature at New York University. She received a BA with high honors in English from Davidson College and an MA in English from NYU. Her dissertation investigates how people conceived of and inhabited New York City’s Broadway during the period it emerged as the nation’s modern publishing capital. In doing so, she traces a distinct tradition of mid-nineteenth-century writing that connects key features of Broadway’s material life—mirrors, gaslights, child-peddlers, and theaters—to the possibilities and challenges of mass print, in particular the role of the printed text as a medium of human connection. She is a founding member of the research collaborative, NewYorkScapes, and has received awards supporting her research from the American Antiquarian Society, the Rare Book School, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Blevin is a 2016-2017 Mellon Dissertation Fellow in English and joins the Center as an honorary fellow.