Associate Professor of Literature. Prof. Benson specializes in American literary and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of Sound-Blind: American Literature and the Politics of Transcription (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), which considers questions of sensation, ability, and coloniality in both literary and ethnographic media. A second book project in progress examines representations of species extinction. His articles have appeared in journals including PMLA, Small Axe, Leviathan, Narrative, and Criticism and in the edited volume Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures. Courses cross-listed in Experimental Humanities have included “Jeanne Lee’s Total Environment,” “Soundscapes of American Literature,” and “Introduction to American Studies.” Professor Benson has been at Bard since 2012.