Mott, Wesley T. 1946–

PERSONAL: Born September 18, 1946, in Attleboro, MA; son of Theodore W. (a banker) and Shirley J. (a homemaker and florist; maiden name, Hanson) Mott; married Sandra Jean McDonald (a librarian), August 26, 1967; children: Nathaniel, Sarah. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Boston University, A.B., 1968, A.M., 1969, Ph.D., 1974. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES: Home—42 Deer Run Rd., Vineyard Haven, MA 02568. Office—Department of Humanities and Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609-2280. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Boston University, Boston, MA, lecturer in English, 1972–74; Thomas College, Waterville, ME, assistant professor, 1974–77, associate professor of English, 1978, director of Division of Liberal Arts, 1976–78; University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, lecturer in English, editor, and project director, 1978–87; Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, assistant professor, 1987–89, associate professor, 1989–94, professor of English, 1994–, managing editor of Emerson Society Papers, 1989–2005, editor, 2005–. Boston University, member of national alumni council, 1984–2004, member of executive board of College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association, 1999–, president, 2003–2004; Edgewood College, adjunct faculty member; guest lecturer at University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh, and DePaul University. Walden Woods Project, member of advisory board, 1990–; Save Our Heritage, member of advisory board, 1999–. Presenter for the videotape and computer disc New England Transcendentalists, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1997. Concord Saunterer, member of editorial board, 1994–.

MEMBER: Ralph Waldo Emerson Society (founder; president, 2002–03), Association for Documentary Editing, Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, Melville Society, Thoreau Society (chair of executive committee, 1990–95; member of board of directors, 1990–98, vice president for publications, 1998–2004); Louisa May Alcott Society (founding advisory board member, 2005–), Orchard House Museum.

AWARDS, HONORS: White House Conference Energy Conservation Award, 1979; grants from Wisconsin Private Sector Initiative Program, 1980 and 1982; Innovative Award in Continuing Education, National University Continuing Education Association and American College Testing Program, 1981; fellow, American Council of Learned Societies, 1983–84; grants from U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1985, Wisconsin Humanities Committee, 1985, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1985, 1986–87, and 1989; Leavey Award for Excellence in Education, 1990; citation for "outstanding academic book," Choice, 1997, for Biographical Dictionary of Transcendentalism; Distinguished Achievement Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, 1999; Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award, Thoreau Society, 2004.

WRITINGS:

"The Strains of Eloquence:" Emerson and His Sermons, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 1989.

(Editor) The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 4, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1992.

(Editor and contributor) Biographical Dictionary of Transcendentalism, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

(Editor and contributor) Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

(Editor, with Robert E. Burkholder) Emersonian Circles: Essays in Honor of Joel Myerson, University of Rochester Press (Rochester, NY), 1997.

(Editor) The American Renaissance in New England, Gale (Detroit, MI), Second Series, 2000, Third Series, 2001, Fourth Series, 2001.

Bonds of Affection: Thoreau on Dogs and Cats, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Emerson Centenary Essays, edited by Joel Myerson, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1982; Studies in the American Renaissance, edited by Joel Myerson, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1985; On Emerson: The Best from "American Literature," edited by Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1988; An Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Joel Myerson, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999; and Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens, edited by Paul Schlicke, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999. Series editor, "The Spirit of Thoreau," Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1997–2001, then University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2004–. Contributor of more than fifty articles and reviews to academic journals and popular magazines, including Thoreau Society Bulletin, New England Quarterly, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, American Literature, and Emerson Society Papers. Editor, Thomas Business Review, 1974–78, and Wisconsin Small Business Forum, 1982–88.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Coediting the ninth volume of the journals of Henry David Thoreau, for Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ); research on Ralph Waldo Emerson and New England transcendentalism and on the Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor.

SIDELIGHTS: Wesley T. Mott once told CA: "Much of the first part of my career was devoted to shedding light on the formative influence of Ralph Waldo Emer-son's early ministry on the growth of his thinking and writing. "The Strains of Eloquence:" Emerson and His Sermons, was the first book-length study of his sermons, and I also became an editor of the complete edition of his mostly previously unpublished sermons.

"Since then I have been concerned, as author and editor, to make accessible the intellectual foreground and diverse expressions of American transcendentalism."