Samuel Baker
Associate Professor — Ph.D., 2001, University of Chicago

Contact
- E-mail: sebaker@austin.utexas.edu
- Phone: 512-471-8389
- Office: CAL 308
- Office Hours: Please email to make an office hours appointment.
- Campus Mail Code: B5000
Biography
Samuel Baker, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Junior Fellow of the British Studies Program, and frequently teaches for Plan II Honors. Dr. Baker is a Founding Member of the Executive Team for the Good Systems Texas Grand Challenge, and is Chair of that initiative in 2021-22. His research interests include British Romantic poetry; historical fiction, science fiction, and the gothic novel; media studies, informatics, the environmental humanities, and the cultural analysis of the built environment now becoming known as infrastructure studies.
With Good Systems, Dr. Baker is currently a leader of the "Living and Working With Robots" team; previously he was co-PI of the “Bad AI and Beyond” project, which examines how media representations shape public perceptions of artificial intelligence, and innovative ways writers and filmmakers are depicting AI and its impact on society. He has also served as the Executive Team Liaison to the Public Interest Technology research focus area, and he has organized cross-disciplinary speculative fiction conversations, as well as a study group of graduate students funded by Good Systems for their work on research projects concerned with Covid-19.
Dr. Baker is currently writing up findings from his various Good Systems projects, and working on his book in progress, Gothic Care: Walter Scott and the Stewardship of Antiquarian Romance. Analyzing Scott’s pathbreaking historical fictions, this study proposes a new model for understanding his achievement: a model in which authorship and kingship ultimately matter less for his work than does an ethos of stewardship, remediating literature and life alike.
In his first book, Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture (https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3952), Dr. Baker argues that British poet-critics like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and, later, Matthew Arnold developed what would become the idea of modern culture by modeling that idea on Britain's imperial command of the sea. Dr. Baker has also published various articles and book chapters on these authors, on Scott, and on the gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe.
Before returning to academia to take his Ph.D., Professor Baker worked as a journalist and book reviewer, as well as in museums and libraries. These experiences left him something of a generalist, and he maintains broad interests in literature and art, in film and media studies, and in politics.
Courses
E 329R • The Romantic Period
35833 • Fall 2022
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 303
E 350V • Media Thry And Litry Crit
36529 • Fall 2021
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM GAR 2.128
IIWr
E 384K • Disciplinary Inquiries-Wb
35140 • Fall 2020
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
E 392M • Romantic Poetry, 1557-1968
35795 • Spring 2020
Meets F 9:00AM-12:00PM CAL 323
E 384K • Disciplinary Inquiries
35265 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 5:00PM-6:30PM CAL 200
E 384K • Disciplinary Inquiries
35945 • Fall 2018
Meets W 6:00PM-9:00PM CAL 200
E 303D • Plan II World Lit Part II
34705 • Spring 2017
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM MAI 220A
Wr
HU
E 392M • Gothic Poetry And Poetics
35770 • Spring 2017
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CAL 323
E 324 • Media Thry And Litry Crit
35310 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM MEZ 2.118
(also listed as LAH 350)
E 329R • The Romantic Period
35340 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MEZ 1.212
GCWr
E 327 • British Novel In 18th Century
34535 • Spring 2016
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM BEN 1.126
GCWr
UGS 302 • Media Studies: Hist/Crit
61300 • Fall 2015
Meets MW 9:30AM-11:00AM MAI 220F
Wr
ID
E 329R • The Romantic Period
34695 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM PAR 206
GCWr
E 337E • Brit Lit: Restoration-Romantic
34700 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 308
GCWr
E 603A • Composition/Reading World Lit
34980 • Fall 2014
Meets MW 11:00AM-12:30PM CRD 007B
GC
E 392M • Media, Cul, Environ, 1780-1850
36110 • Fall 2014
Meets MW 9:00AM-10:30AM CAL 221
E S321 • Shakespeare: Sel Plays-Gbr
83380 • Summer 2014
GC
E 337E • Brit Lit: Restoration-Romantic
35945 • Spring 2014
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM PAR 103
GCWr
E 349S • Scott And Wordsworth
36035 • Spring 2014
Meets MW 3:00PM-4:30PM PAR 302
Wr
(also listed as LAH 350)
UGS 302 • Media Stds: Hist/Critcl Appros
65070 • Fall 2013
Meets MW 11:00AM-12:30PM MAI 220D
Wr
E 329R • The Romantic Period
35400 • Spring 2013
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 206
E 603A • Comp And Reading In World Lit
34525 • Fall 2012
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CAL 323
E 392M • The Essay: Hist/Prac Of A Form
35860 • Fall 2012
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 214
E 392M • Modrnty Early Romantic Poetry
35675 • Spring 2012
Meets W 11:00AM-2:00PM BEN 1.106
UGS 302 • Media Stds: Hist/Critcl Appros
63460 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM PAR 210
Wr
E 337E • Brit Lit: Restoration-Romantic
35245 • Fall 2011
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM PAR 103
GCWr
E 392M • Lit/Media In Age Of Revolutn
35675 • Fall 2011
Meets MW 12:30PM-2:00PM MEZ 2.118
E S321 • Shakespeare: Sel Plays-Eng
83780 • Summer 2011
GC
E 379R • The Romantic Novel
35875 • Spring 2011
Meets MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM MEZ 2.122
IIWr
E 392M • 19th-Cen Brit Poetry & Poetics
36010 • Spring 2011
Meets MW 11:00AM-12:30PM MEZ 1.104
E 350M • Romanticism & The Gothic-Hon
34705 • Fall 2010
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 210
Wr
T C 302 • Intro To British Studies
42780 • Fall 2010
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM MAI 220F
Wr
C1
E S379M • Romantic Legends-Eng
83325 • Summer 2010
E 316K • Masterworks Of Lit: English
34360-34395 • Spring 2010
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM FAC 21
HU
E 379S • Senior Seminar-W
35180 • Spring 2010
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 304
C2
WGS 393 • Engendering The Romantic Novel
49030 • Spring 2008
Meets MW 12:30PM-2:00PM MEZ 1.104
Publications
Baker, S. (2015) “Sailing Blind: Climate, Intention, and Local and Global Orientation in Wordsworth and Byron.” Evan Gottlieb (Ed.), Global Romanticism: Origins, Orientations, and Engagements, 1760-1820. Lanham, Maryland: Bucknell University Press, 95-108.
Baker, S. (2015) “Ballad.” Dino Franco Felluga (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 109-11.
Baker, S. (2014) “Gaston de Blondeville and its Accompanying Texts: Radcliffe Beyond the Grave.” Angela Wright and Dale Townshend (Eds.), Ann Radcliffe: Romanticism and the Gothic. New York: Cambridge University Press,168-182.
Baker, S. (2012) “Scott’s Worlds of War.” Fiona Robertson (Ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 70-81.
Baker, S. (2010) "The Transmission of Affect: Philosophy, Feeling, and the Media of Udolpho." J. Staiger, A. Cvetkovich & A. Reynolds (Eds.), Political Emotions: Affect and the Public Sphere. New York: Routledge.
Baker, S. (2010) Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press).
Baker, S. (2009) "Scott's Stoic Characters: Ethics, Irony, and Sentiment in The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, and the Author of Waverley." MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 70:4, 443-471.
Baker, S. (2009) "Teaching the Waverley Novels: An Intertextual Approach." In E. Gottlieb & I. Duncan (Eds.), Approaches to Teaching Scott's Waverley Novels. New York: Modern Language Association.
Baker, S. (2008) "The Maritime Georgic and the Lake poet Empire of Culture." ELH: English Literary History, 75(3), 531-563.
Baker, S. (2006) "Animated Looks: The Romantic Literary Sketch and the Unfinished Project of Modern Transparency." Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, 6, 73-95.
Baker, S. (2006) Book Review. Romanticism and War: A Study of British Romantic Period Writers and the Napoleonic Wars. European Romantic Review 17(5), 636-640.
Baker, S. (2003) "Wordsworth, Arnold, and the Maritime Matrix of Culture." The Wordsworth Circle, 34(1), 24-29.
Baker, S. (2002) Book Review. The Poetics of Spice. The Keats-Shelley Journal 51, 231-233.
Baker, S. (2000) Book Review. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief. Modernism/Modernity 7(1), 183-184.