Will Kaufman is a former Marshall Scholar who has taught at the University of Central Lancashire since 1991, specialising in English and American Studies – chiefly literature and culture. His research interests include American humour, the Civil War, transatlantic cultural relations, popular and traditional music and psychological readings of history and culture.

Will’s first book, The Comedian as Confidence Man, was published by Wayne State University Press (USA) in 1997 and focuses on the ‘internal conflict between the social critic who demands to be taken seriously and the comedian who cannot be’. The book covers such diverse U.S. comedians as Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Vonnegut, Garrison Keillor and Bill Hicks.

Will earned an AHRC Research Leave Grant to write The Civil War in American Culture, which was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2006. This book explores the cultural origins and enduring legacy of the American Civil War, focusing on its continued influence in contemporary literature, film, music, electronic media, material culture, and public performance.

Will is a founder and a co-director of the Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies, which in 2005 was awarded the prestigious Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education from the Institute of International Education. He and Heidi Macpherson organised the Maastricht Centre’s first international conference and have edited two Maastricht essay collections, Transatlantic Studies (2000) and New Perspectives in Transatlantic Studies (2002).

Will is the series editor for ABC-Clio’s 18-volume Transatlantic Relations Encyclopaedia Series and, together with Heidi Macpherson, co-edited the flagship title in that series, the 3-volume Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics and History.

Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin’

Will is also an accomplished folksinger and multi-instrumentalist, and has always seen music as a potent means of bringing history to life. His acclaimed presentation, Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin’, has introduced students on both sides of the Atlantic to the struggles of the Great Depression and the power of Woody Guthrie’s music.

Will is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He sits on the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies and is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Transatlantic Studies and U.S. Studies Online: The BAAS Postgraduate Journal. He is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (yes, the Wobblies are still out there) and the University and College Union.

Latterly, Will has developed a body of research applying Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic theories to a range of cultural and historical texts and moments, and he is currently writing his third monograph, American Culture in the 1970s, to be published in 2009 by Edinburgh University Press.

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