Ph.D., Boston University; B.A., Yale University

Kathy Lawrence is a scholar of nineteenth-century American literature and art, focusing in particular on Emerson and Margaret Fuller and the circle of young artists and writers among whom they lived and worked. As a literary archivist engaged in research with primary materials, she examines rare unpublished letters, diaries, and manuscripts to reconstruct the milieu that influenced our young culture, tracing a thread of mentorship from Emerson and his acolytes to Henry James, uncovering forgotten figures such as painter and poet Caroline Sturgis and sculptor Waldo Story who have until now been erased from the canon. In her teaching, Professor Lawrence emphasizes the connection between writing, painting, and sculpture in the creation of our culture, finding therein a paradoxical fusion of the sacred and the secular that constructs a powerful American myth. Her publications include numerous articles on Emerson, Fuller, Henry James and William Wetmore Story, and a forthcoming monograph on Caroline Sturgis.