Jim Bishop
As is the case for other students in the L&E program, Jim's academic career has taken a resolutely nonlinear path. He has been a landscaper, pizza guy, ski resort mascot, game show host, river guide, naturalist, associate camp director and program director, high school teacher, and college writing instructor. He grew up in Maine and has also lived in Vermont, North Carolina, upstate New York, Alaska, Australia, and Korea. Along the way, he earned his BA in history at Bowdoin College and his MA in English at Middlebury College, each time falsely assuming he was working on a terminal degree.
Jim's research interests focus on the relationship between gender, nationalism, and nature in nineteenth-century American literature. He has written on such authors as Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Washington Irving, Harriet Jacobs, and Sarah Orne Jewett. He also is interested in Appalachian literature, bioregionalism, music, and literary sentimentalism.
Jim has hiked both the Appalachian Trail and the Arizona Trail, and he has led whitewater canoe trips in the Northeast and Southeast. Now that he's in Reno, Jim tries to take advantage of all that the area has to offer: hiking Nevada county highpoints, swimming in alpine lakes, mountain biking on Peavine Mountain, and rock climbing in the Sierras, just to name a few. He also has become a homeowner, which has brought its share of adventures, though of a more domestic variety.