Ross Shideler

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Ross Shideler, a professor of Scandinavian literature and comparative literature, holds a bachelor’s degree from California State University, San Francisco; a master’s degree from the University of Stockholm, Sweden; and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an expert on the application of behaviorist theories to literature, and his wit and ease mark the teaching style of a dedicated and exacting professor.

A gifted translator and published poet, Shideler’s extraordinary knowledge of literature ranges from French symbolist poetry to contemporary Swedish diction. His lectures enthrall with a combination of charm and mastery of detail. He serves as chair and graduate advisor of the comparative literature program, and he is associate editor of the Swedish Book Review. The author of numerous poems and scholarly translations, he is presently researching and writing a book on Darwinism in literature, exploring the naturalist’s influence on certain French, English, Scandinavian and American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.