Western Illinois University: Macomb Campus

Timothy Helwig is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English & Journalism at WIU. He earned a B.A. in English at Gettysburg College, an M.A. in English at Miami University of Ohio, and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park.

His dissertation, Race, Nativism, and the Making of Class in Antebellum City-Mysteries, analyzes the construction of white and African-American working-class identities in popular fiction and the penny press of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. He has published articles in American Studies Journal (Fall/Winter 2006) and American Periodicals (Fall 2009), and he has received research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society (2005) and the Library Company of Philadelphia (2010). Most recently, he received a Faculty Summer Stipend Award (2011) to conduct research at the New York Public Library on 1850s urban reform literature.

Timothy’s undergraduate courses include Introduction to American Literature, Introduction to African-American Literature, and Introduction to American Gothic Fiction, as well as upper-division courses in Pre-Civil War American Literature and American Literary Realism & Naturalism.

His Fall 2012 courses include the Pre-Civil War American Novel in Context and a General Honors course on representations of social class and the American Dream in fiction and contemporary popular media. His spring 2013 Senior Seminar will focus on the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe.