About

Michael Bérubé is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Penn State. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Virginia and a B.A. from Columbia University. He is the author of twelve books, including Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics, Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child, and What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and 'Bias' in Higher Education. His work has received notable recognition, with Life as We Know It being a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 1996 and selected as one of the best books of the year by Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio. Bérubé has also published edited collections on higher education and cultural studies, and his recent publications include The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom, The Secret Life of Stories, Life as Jamie Knows It, an edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, It's Not Free Speech, and The Ex-Human. He has served on various academic committees and councils, including three terms on the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, two terms on the AAUP National Council, and the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. In 2012, he served as president of the Modern Language Association. From 2010 to 2017, he was the Director of Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and he has been involved in the University Faculty Senate, serving as Chair for the 2018-19 academic year. His areas of specialization include American Literature After 1900, Contemporary Literature, Theory and Cultural Studies, Visual Culture, Blogging, film, cartoons, and graphic design.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• History
• Speech recognition
• Oceanography
• Geology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• An Action Plan for Rail Energy and Emissions Innovation

  2024-12-01

  reportOpen access

  The Action Plan for Rail Energy and Emissions Innovation proposes actions to reduce and nearly eliminate emissions in the U.S. rail sector, in line with the U.S. economy-wide goal of net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. It also proposes actions to leverage the rail system to reduce emissions from other modes. The national goal of achieving a zero-emission freight system by 2050 draws our attention to the fact that freight transport cannot be addressed simply mode by mode, but it should instead be treated as an interdependent system. This is especially true when pursuing decarbonization. This action plan presents how both rail transport and decarbonization intersect with our national transportation decarbonization blueprint, the decarbonization of the freight system, and national transmission goals. The intended audience of this report is the stakeholders who will advance rail decarbonization in a just and economical way by propelling the suite of actions listed here. This includes government at all levels, rail companies, locomotive manufacturers, labor unions, Amtrak, and more.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intellectual Disability and Literature

  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature · 2024-12-10

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Intellectual disability is difficult to define—in the past it was generally understood as “mental retardation” or “feeblemindedness”—and difficult to distinguish from developmental and/or psychosocial disability (e.g., muscular dystrophy or schizophrenia, neither of which entails cognitive impairment). Nevertheless, it has been widely depicted in literature for centuries. In the 21st century, the field of literary disability studies, which had begun in the 1990s with an almost exclusive focus on physical disability, began to develop theories of literary representation that could be extended to depictions of literary characters with intellectual disabilities as well. Some of those characters are among the most widely discussed figures in the fiction of the past few centuries, such as Benjy Compson, the nonverbal thirty-three-year-old man in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Christopher Boone, the (apparently) autistic teenager in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Much of the analysis of literary characters with intellectual disabilities has turned on the question of whether the depictions of those characters are realistic, accurate portrayals, since there is understandable concern as to whether the literary representation of intellectual disability might contribute to the stigmatization and ostracism of actual people with intellectual disabilities (some of whom, it is presumed, may be incapable of representing themselves in fiction). However, there are other ways to read intellectual disability in literature that do not rely on representation but rather seek to understand how intellectual disability functions to reveal the workings of narrative. Intellectual disability can be used as a device to explore temporality, causality, and a text’s capacity for self-reflection, which might serve as an analogue for human self-reflection in general. Moreover, literary texts can mobilize ideas about intellectual disability, including the stigma attached to intellectual disability, regardless of whether they contain any characters with identifiable intellectual disabilities. Finally, intellectual disability can be rendered in such a way as to disorient readers, either in the service of psychological realism (showing what it is like to have dementia) or in the service of narrative experimentalism. A literary text might thereby expand the capacity for human self-expression precisely, if paradoxically, by allowing us to imagine humans with limited capacity for self-expression.

  PublisherDOI

• An Action Plan for Maritime Energy and Emissions Innovation

  2024-12-01

  reportOpen access

  The Action Plan for Maritime Energy and Emissions Innovation (the action plan) lays out a strategy to reduce and eliminate nearly all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. maritime sector by 2050, in line with the U.S. economy-wide goal of net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. To reach this goal, the action plan outlines actions, objectives, targets, and activities to scale low- and net-zero emissions fuels, energies, and technologies; strengthen the maritime workforce; bolster shipbuilding capacity; and expand complementary landside infrastructure. The action plan supports industry, mariners, communities, civil society, sub-national governments, and other interested parties that will decarbonize the maritime sector alongside the U.S. government.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Academic Freedom and the “Whitelash” of the 2020s

  Change The Magazine of Higher Learning · 2023-04-27 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael BérubéMichael Bérubé (mfb12@psu.edu) is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Penn State University. He served on the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom from 2009 to 2018 and was the President of the Modern Language Association in 2012. His most recent book is It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom, coauthored with Jennifer Ruth (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022).

  PublisherDOI

• Academic Labor, Shared Governance, and the Future That Awaits Us

  English Language Notes · 2023-04-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This essay draws on the author’s experiences in the Faculty Senate at Pennsylvania State University and cochairing a committee on COVID-19 and shared governance for the American Association of University Professors.

  PublisherDOI

• It's Not Free Speech

  Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks · 2022 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Speech recognition
  PublisherDOI

• Publisher Correction to: “The University Is Not a Public Square”: An Interview with Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth About It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom

  Society · 2022-08-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vital Signs

  American Scientist · 2022-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “The University Is Not a Public Square”: An Interview with Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth About It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom

  Society · 2022-07-17 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• EVs@Scale Lab Consortium Bi-Annual Stakeholder Meeting, 17 August 2022, Golden, Colorado [Slides]

  2022-08-17

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Electric Vehicles at Scale Lab Consortium (EVs@Scale Lab Consortium) is accelerating research to support the establishment of a secure and scalable national network of charging infrastructure. This network will be critical to support tens of millions of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty EVs on American roads by 2030. The EVs@Scale Lab Consortium brings together national laboratories and key stakeholders to conduct infrastructure research and development (R&D) that advances innovations in, and sets unified standards for, high-power and wireless charging. The effort will also develop technologies to integrate vehicle charging with the power grid, and develop cybersecurity measures to protect drivers, vehicles, equipment, and the grid. The first hybrid EVs@Scale Lab Consortium Biannual Stakeholder Meeting was held at NREL on August 17, 2022, to identify research, development, and deployment needs to accelerate technology development for electric vehicles at scale and explore opportunities for collaboration across government, academia, and industry.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Domna C. Stanton

  City University of New York

  40 shared

• Nancy Houston Miller

  Ten Chen Hospital

  26 shared

• Amada Sandoval

  Princeton University

  22 shared

• Adam D. Brown

  New School

  20 shared

• Kwame Anthony Appiah

  New York University

  20 shared

• Herbert Lindenberger

  20 shared

• M. G. Smith

  University of Southampton

  20 shared

• John Guillory

  19 shared

Awards & honors

• American Association of University Professors' Committee A o…
• AAUP National Council (2005-2011)
• International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities…
• President of the Modern Language Association (2012)