UC Merced Expert 

Gregg Camfield is a literature and culture expert with a penchant for good humor. Camfield has published widely on American literature and culture, from 18th century poet Joel Barlow to the television cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head. Mostly he has worked on the ethical and esthetic debates of the 19^th century, concentrating on the works of Mark Twain, American literary humor, literary sentimentalism and domesticity. These perspectives inform his three books, “Sentimental Twain: Mark Twain in the Maze of Moral Philosophy” (Pennsylvania, 1994), “Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature” (Oxford, 1997), and “The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain” (2003). He is carrying forward the implications of the second book in a study of what new discoveries in neuroscience can tell us about how people respond to literature and other complex artistic representations.

Camfield is a graduate of Brown University, and he earned his doctorate in English from UC Berkeley.