Slotkin, Richard, 1942-

Dates

• Existence: 1942    

Biography

American historian and novelist Richard Slotkin received his Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1963, and his doctorate from Brown University in 1967. He received an honorary Master of Arts in Art Education from Wesleyan University in 1976. In 1966, Slotkin began his academic career at Wesleyan University, where he remained until 2009, when he retired and became the Olin Professor of English and American Studies Emeritus at Wesleyan.

Slotkin’s historical works comprise a trilogy on the mythology of the American West: Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (1973); The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1985); and Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (1992). His other historical studies include Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (2005) and No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 (2009). Slotkin also edited So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, 1675-1677 (1978), with James K. Folsom, and provided notes and an introduction to a Penguin Books edition (1986) of The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper. His works of historical fiction consist of The Crater (1980), The Return of Henry Starr (1988), and Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln (2000).