Meet your Faculty Affiliates: Tom Augst (Performance)

Tom Augst is Faculty Affiliate for the Performance stream and an associate professor of English in CAS.

1. Where are you from? How long have you been in New York or at NYU?

I grew up in Berkeley, California, and have been in New York since the fall of 2007, when I joined the Department of English as an associate professor.

2. What are your professional interests? What courses do you teach?

I teach courses in American literature and culture, and I am especially passionate about extraordinary writing from the 19th century, by folks like Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Dickinson. I've developed a new course for the English Department: "My Space: Writing Selves from the Diary to the Internet." In my research, I explore how people in the 19th century used new forms of reading, writing, and speaking to build meaningful lives for themselves. English Departments typically want students to think about the value of particular books, works of literary art. By looking at historical artifacts like diaries, letters, newspapers, or club records, I am more interested in the ordinary arts of living — how any of us creates value through the many things we do with books: making friends, falling in love, finding beauty, killing time, figuring out why our lives matter to others and ourselves.

3. Do you have publications you'd like student to know about?

I wrote a *really useful* book, called The Clerk's Tale, about how to succeed in business (in the 19th century, anyway).

4. What are one or two key things you'd like to do this year with your stream?
With my awesome RA Rob Eckard, I want our stream to see the amazing diversity of the performing arts in the city and to strut their own stuff in a Broome Showcase.

Thanks!