Patrick Thomas Morgan

Currently working toward his PhD in English at Duke University, Patrick Thomas Morgan is a former geologist and science journalist whose research focuses on theories of nature and the human—such as the relation between geology and literature—in 19th century American and transatlantic texts. As a geologist, he studied micro-fauna and climate change, presenting his research (“Late Holocene Climate Variability and Implications for the Onset of Arroyo Incision along the Little Dolores River, Western Colorado” and “Dacryoconarids and the Eifelian-Givetian Boundary (Middle Devonian) in the Marcellus Shale of Western New York State”) at Geological Society of America conferences. His journalism appears in DISCOVER magazine, EARTH magazine, and The American Gardener, in addition to DISCOVER’s in-house blogs, 80beats and Discoblog. Most recently, Patrick co-wrote alongside Priscilla Wald the March 2013 preface to American Literature’s Thoreau Symposium, tracing how “the figure of the human occasions a shift in the modes of engagement, including reading practices, through which human beings, and humanists, make sense of lived experience.” Leading science and literature critic Laura Dassow Walls has called Patrick’s scholarly work a “surprising discovery,” referring to his 2010 publication, “Aesthetic Inflections: Thoreau, Gender, and Geology” in theConcord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies.