Articles and Reviews (Forthcoming)
"Samuel Johnson and the Language of Abolition"
In Samuel Johnson and Language: Papers from the First International Conference on Johnson, ed. Anne McDermott (Birmingham University Press, forthcoming).
Articles and Reviews (Published)
Review of American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Ed. David Shields, Claremont Review of Books, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (Summer 2008).
"Why Literature Matters: Poets and the Abolition of Slavery"
Adapted from the keynote speech delivered at the Wisconsin Council of Social Studies Teachers Annual Conference, March 20, 2007, Journal of the Wisconsin Council for The Social Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 1-8.
Published interview, "James Basker on William Wilberforce"
Conducted by Sherri Sheu, History News Network [www.hnn.us/articles/34715], March 5, 2007.
"Foreword"
The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War by Robert E. Bonner (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), pp. ix-xii.
"Johnson, Boswell, and the Abolition of Slavery"
Untold London [web site, Museum of the City of London], www.untoldlondon.org.uk/archives/TRA38765, July 2006.
"Man of Letters"
Review of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, by Henry Hitchings, Claremont Review of Books, vol. VI, no. 3 (Summer 2006), pp. 56-57.
"Why Historical Documents Matter"
National History Club Newsletter and Forum, issue VIII (Spring 2006), pp. 1-2.
"Black Writers of the Founding Era"
The New York Journal of American History, vol. LXVI, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2005), pp. 132-135.
"Johnson, Boswell, and the Abolition of Slavery"
The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London (Serial no. E VI, 2002-2003, pub. Sept. 2003), pp. 36-48.
"‘Amazing Grace’: Literature as a Window on Colonial Slavery"
Magazine of History, vol. 17, no. 3 (April 2003), special issue on "Colonial Slavery," pp. 28-30.
"Poets Against Slavery in the 1600’s and 1700’s"
Time.com: Time Online Edition, February 18, 2003.
"Multicultural Perspectives: Johnson, Race, and Gender"
In Johnson at the Millenium, ed. Phillip Smallwood (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001), pp. 64-79.
"Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and Oroonoko"
The Age of Johnson, ed. Paul J. Korshin, vol. 12 (2001), pp. 47-66.
"Smollett's Racial Consciousness in Roderick Random"
1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 6 (2001).
"‘The Next Insurrection’: Johnson, Race, and Rebellion"
The Age of Johnson, ed. Paul J. Korshin, vol. 11 (2000), pp. 37-51.
"Myth upon Myth: Johnson, Gender, and the Misogyny Question"
The Age of Johnson, vol. 8 (1997).
"Criticism and the Rise of Periodical Literature"
Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 4, eds. Claude Rawson and H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
"Sidney Sussex and the Origins of the Abolition Society in 1787"
Sidney Sussex Magazine (Cambridge, 1997).
Review of Samuel Johnson After Deconstruction
By Steven Lynn, The Age of Johnson, vol. 8 (1997), 420-25.
"Samuel Johnson"
Britain in the Hanoverian Age 1714-1837, ed. Gerald Newman, et al (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 378-80.
"Samuel Johnson and the African-American Reader"
The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London no. DX (1996), 47-57. Revised edition reprinted in Passages to the New World 1500-1775, ed. Deborah Symonds and Frederick Adams (New York: Drake University, 1998), 503-517.
"Radical Affinities: Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Johnson"
Tradition in Transition, eds. Ribeiro and Basker (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 41-55.
"An Eighteenth-Century Critique of Eurocentrism: Samuel Johnson and the Plight of Native Americans"
In La Grande-Bretagne et l'Europe des Lumières, ed. Serge Soupel (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1996), pp. 207-220.
"Dictionary Johnson Amidst the Dons of Sidney: A Chapter in Cambridge History"
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge: Historical Essays, eds. H.B. Nisbet and D.E.D. Beales (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1996), pp. 131-44.
"Coming of Age in Johnson's England: Adolescence in the Rambler"
Les Ages de la Vie en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe Siècle, ed. Serge Soupel (Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1995), pp. 197-212.
"Samuel Johnson and the American Common Reader"
The Age of Johnson, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 3-30.
"Two Literary Notes on Eighteenth-Century Cambridge"
Sidney Sussex Magazine (1994).
"Resisting Authority: or, Johnson and The Wizard of Oz"
Teaching the Works of Samuel Johnson, eds. Gwin Kolb and David R. Anderson (New York: MLA, 1993).
John Cleland entries in the Dictionary of British Literary Characters
Ed. John R. Greenfield (New York: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1993).
"Scotticisms and the Problem of Cultural Identity for Hume, Smollett, and Boswell"
In The Social History of the Scottish Enlightenment, eds. Richard Sher and John Dwyer (Williamsburg, VA, 1991), pp. 81-95. Re-issued in Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1993).
Review of Daisuke Nagashima's Johnson the Philologist
In The Age of Johnson, vol. 4 (1991), 428-32.
"Dancing Dogs, Women Preachers, and the Myth of Johnson's Misogyny"
In The Age of Johnson, 3 (1990), 63-90.
Review of Antonia Forster, Index to Book Reviews in England 1749-1774
In Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, vol. 4 (1990), 148-50.
"Importing the Enlightenment: Continental Culture and the Eighteenth Century English Reading Public"
In the Transactions of the Seventh International Congress on the Enlightenment (Oxford and Geneva: The Voltaire Foundation, 1989).
Review of Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom and Sir Launcelot Greaves,
In Eighteenth Century Scotland (Spring 1989).
"F.O. Matthiessen and Oliver Goldsmith"
Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History, III, 3 (Summer 1987).
"The Wages of Sin: The Later Career of John Cleland"
Études Anglaises, June 1987, 178-194.
"Smollett and Literary Journalism 1756-1763"
Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History, III, 2 (Spring 1987).
"Minim and the Great Cham: Smollett and Johnson on the Prospect of an English Academy"
In Johnson and His Age, ed. James Engell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 137-161.
"The Eclectic Review"
In The Romantic Age, 1789-1836, vol. 2 of British Literary Magazines, ed. Alvin Sullivan (Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 124-133.
"The Wit's Magazine"
In The Augustan Age and the Age of Johnson, 1698-1788, vol. 1 of British Literary Magazines, ed. Alvin Sullivan (Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 363-369.
"The General Magazine and Impartial Review"
In The Augustan Age and the Age of Johnson, 1698-1788, vol.1 of British Literary Magazines, ed. Sullivan (Greenwood, 1983), 130-36.
"Another Smollett Play?"
Notes and Queries, n.s. 27 (February 1980), 33-34.