Jake McGinnis is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame. Broadly interested in literary writing as a means of experimental thinking, his research draws from the fields of ecocriticism, environmental history, Indigenous studies, and affect theory to examine the literary forms that shape present understandings of creative nonfiction and environmental writing. His dissertation argues that antebellum American travel writing reflects the ecological and social conditions today associated with modernity and the Anthropocene, especially environmental instability, anxiety over looming social and cultural change, and the ongoing presence of marginalized and disenfranchised voices.

McGinnis’s writing and research have recently appeared or are forthcoming in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, The Concord Saunterer, The Thoreau Society Bulletin, Environmental History, and Papers on Language and Literature. From 2016 to 2020 he served as managing editor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the journal of the Association for the Study of the Literature and Environment.

McGinnis earned his B.A. in Writing at Northland College and an M.A. in English from the University of Idaho. Before coming to Notre Dame he was a lecturer at the University of Idaho, where he taught courses in writing, rhetoric, and professional communication.