JohnPetersPh.D.Professor | Distinguished Research ProfessorEnglishFacultyjohn.peters@unt.edu940-565-2679115 Auditorium Bldg

FacultyEnglishJohn Peters is the author of Joseph Conrad and the Narration of Silence (Edinburgh 2024), which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2025, Silence, Space and Absence in Conrad’s Works (Palgrave Macmillan 2024), which was selected as a Choice Top Seventy-Five Community College Title, Joseph Conrad's Critical Reception (Cambridge 2013), which was 2nd runner-up for the tri-annual Adam Gillon Book Award in Conrad Studies, and Conrad and Impressionism (Cambridge 2001), which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2001 and was runner-up for the Adam Gillon Book Award. He is also author of The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad (2006) and editor of A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad (Oxford 2010), Conrad in the Public Eye (Rodopi 2008), Conrad's Drama (Brill 2019; Honorable Mention for the Adam Gillon Book Award), Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes (Broadview 2010), Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Broadview 2019), volume two of Joseph Conrad: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge 2012), and the Norton Critical Edition of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Other Stories (2015). Conrad and Nature (an essay collection co-edited with Lissa Schneider-Rebozo and Jeffrey Mathis McCarthy) was selected as Co-Winner of the Adam Gillon Book Award in Conrad Studies. He is translator of Takamura Kōtarō's book The Chieko Poems (Green Integer 2007; Revised edition 2025) and received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts to translate Takamura's book Journey. His articles have appeared in such journals as Studies in Short Fiction, Studies in the Novel, Philosophy and Literature, College Literature, English Language Notes, English Literature in Transition, Victorian Review, and Modern Fiction Studies. He is a past President of the Joseph Conrad Society of America and current General Editor of Conradiana, the oldest journal in Conrad studies, for which he received the Council of Editors of Learned Journals Phoenix Award for 2017. He was First Runner-Up for the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America's Wacław Lednicki Award for Excellence in the Humanities for 2020 and was a finalist for the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America's Susanne M. Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award (2024 and 2025). He has received two lifetime achievements awards: the Joseph Conrad Society of America's highest honor, the Ian Watt Prize for Excellence in Conrad Scholarship and The South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Honorary Member Award. John Peters has also received the President's Council University Service Award for 2016, the Toulouse Graduate School's Toulouse Scholar Award for 2020, the Office of Research and Innovation's Research Leadership Award for 2020, and the UNT Foundation's Eminent Faculty Award for 2018, the university's highest honor. Finally, a November 20, 2017 article in The New Yorker magazine refers to him as "the leading American Conradian." His main areas of interest are Conrad studies, British Modernism, Victorian literature, American Modernism, and Japanese translation. Along with his translation of Takamura's book Journey, he is currently working on a book project on the aesthetics of perception in the works of Oscar Wilde. 2018 Eminent Faculty Award Watch on Youtube Conradian Expert article