Will Glover

My research interests lie in early American literature, culture, and history. My dissertation, “The Poetics of Colonial Accounting in Early America,” examines the paradoxical, productive relationship between two seemingly opposed rhetorical strands in early American non-fiction: on the one hand, a drive to quantify, measure, and monetize—especially in matters of land and resources—and on the other, a deep aesthetic investment in the boundless, the ineffable, and the Edenic. Across canonical and archival texts by settler, Indigenous, and African writers, I trace the peculiar relationship between quantification and wonder.

Education
Ph.D. in English, Boston University (expected Summer 2026)
M.A. in English, Boston University (2022)
M.A. in Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York (2017)
B.A. in English Language and Literature, Exeter College, University of Oxford (2016)

Presentations
“‘There are two kindes of Walnuts, and of them infinit store’: the poetics of lists in Thomas Hariot’s Briefe and True Report,” Society of Early Americanists Biennial Conference at Notre Dame (June 6th, 2025)
“Crèvecœur’s bees,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Boston (March 8th, 2024)
“Generative heritage: Indigenous history-work in William Bartram’s Travels,” American Literature Association Annual Conference in Boston (May 27th, 2023)
“A country for old men: wondrous gerontocracy in Sir Walter Ralegh’s The Discovery of Guiana,” Travel & Wonder, 1450-1750 at the University of York (online, April 27th 2023)
“Maroons and morasses: complicating the swamp in antebellum literature,” Boston University Americanist Forum (March 27th, 2023)
“Native American petitions in New England, 1675–1763,” Modern Languages Association Annual Convention in San Francisco (January 8th, 2023)
“The state of the archive & Native American petitions,” The Mobile Archive Project Symposium, University of Siegen, Germany (online, November 2021)

Peer-reviewed Publications
“A Country for Old Men? Wondrous Gerontocracy in Sir Walter Ralegh’s The Discovery of Guiana,” 38-56 in Travel and Wonder in the Early Modern World: Representations, Descriptions, and Uses of the Unfamiliar, ed. Jaska Kainulainen (Routledge, 2025)
“‘On Poetry and geometric Truth’: Wordsworth’s Genius Loci,” The Wordsworth Circle 54:1, 63-85 (Winter 2023).
“‘Where many paths and errands meet’: Travel Writing in The Lord of the Rings” – Journal of Tolkien Research, 9:2 (2020).

Other Publications and Reviews:
Conference review of ALA 2023 in Early American Literature, Vol. 59:2 (2024), 522-527.
“Ethical dilemmas of the digital Robinsonade: What should we do with ‘colonialist’ video games?” Ampersand: An American Studies Journal, Vol. 2:2 (Summer 2023).
“Tolkien’s Legacy,” BU Today (August 30, 2023).
“Thresholds,” Rucksack Magazine Vol. 8, Coasts (September 2021).
“Spaces,” Rucksack Magazine Vol. 6, Endless (April 2020).
“Pedestrian Thinking,” Rucksack Magazine Vol. 5, The City Issue (November 2019).
“Lies and Longing,” Rucksack Magazine Vol. 4, The Pursuit Issue (April 2019).
“The Perils of Pilgrimage,” Rucksack Magazine Vol. 3, The Island Issue (September 2018).
“The Window’s Eye,” Rucksack Magazine online (May 2018).
“Tolkien’s Beowulf,” Exon (2014), 65.

Teaching:
“Reading and Writing the American Environment” (EN 120, EN 195)
“Crossing Borders: Exploring and Expanding the Genre of Travel Writing” (WR 120, WR 151)

My CV