John J. Garcia
Assistant Professor

Brief Biography

John J. Garcia has a B.A./M.A. in English from California State University, San Bernardino and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley he was also one of the first doctoral students to complete the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. At CSUN he teaches courses in pre-1900 minority authors, Early American literature, Latinx literature, popular culture, and the history of the book.

Research in the history of the book and material texts has been supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. Interests in this area include: publishers' archives and account books, papermaking, bindings as a reflection of consumer taste, subscription publishing and the geographic distribution of books.

Garcia is currently writing a cultural history of publishing, printing, and papermaking entitled "Without Order: Booksellers and the Failures of the Early American Book Trade, 1679-1830." Research for this project has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Ford Foundation, the Bibliographical Society of America, the New York Public Library, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Huntington Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

Research 

Critical Theory History of the Book American Literature American Popular Culture Cultural History Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority

Connections