Wikipedia

Ed Folsom

Ed Folsom (born 1947) is the Roy J. Carver Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Iowa. He is an American literary critic, textual scholar, and digital humanist, and considered one of the world's leading experts on the poet Walt Whitman.[7][8][9][10][11] Folsom is the author or editor of twelve books,[12] most of which focus on Whitman and Leaves of Grass, though he has also written on Emily Dickinson, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Herman Melville, W. S. Merwin, and others. Folsom's scholarship has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007–2008),[2] three Choice Outstanding Academic Book awards, and an Independent Publisher Book Award.[3] Folsom has lectured in over twelve countries[2] and, in 2023, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Technical University of Dortmund.[5]

Ed Folsom
Folsom at Whitman Week in Bamberg, Germany, July 2014
Born
Lowell Edwin Folsom

(1947-09-30) September 30, 1947 (age 78)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.[1]
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (2007–2008)[2]
Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award (×3)[3][4]
Independent Publisher Book Award[3][4]
Honorary doctorate, TU Dortmund (2023)[5]
Academic background
Alma materOhio Wesleyan University (BA)[3]
University of Rochester (MA, 1972; PhD, 1976)[4]
Academic work
DisciplineAmerican literature
Sub-discipline
Whitman studies
InstitutionsUniversity of Iowa (Roy J. Carver Professor Emeritus)[6]
Notable works
Walt Whitman's Native Representations (1994)
Co-director, Walt Whitman Archive (since 1995)
Websiteenglish.uiowa.edu/people/ed-folsom

Early life and education

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Folsom was born in Pittsburgh on September 30, 1947, and was raised in various towns across the industrial Midwest, including Chicago, Columbus, and Cleveland, where he went to high school.[1] There, Folsom had his first impactful encounter with Whitman, when his English teacher announced the Assassination of John F. Kennedy with a reading of the poet's elegy to Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."[13] In 1969, Folsom graduated magna cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University. After teaching high school English at Lancaster High School (Ohio) for a year, he began his graduate studies in English and American Literature at the University of Rochester. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1976 with a thesis on "America, the Metaphor: Place as Person as Poem as Poet." His advisor was William H. Rueckert, one of the foundational figures of Ecocriticism.[14]

Teaching career

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Following a short stint as a Visiting Assistant Professor at State University of New York at Geneseo (1975–1976), Folsom taught American literature for nearly fifty years at the University of Iowa (1976–2023), where he won numerous teaching and mentorship awards.[4] Originally hired as a twentieth-century scholar, he soon became an expert on nineteenth-century literature, specifically Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.[15] From 1997 to 2002 he served as F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of English before being named Roy J. Carver Professor of English in 2002.[16] In 1996, Folsom taught as a Senior Fulbright Professor at Technical University of Dortmund in Germany.[17] He returned to the country as a Visiting Professor in 2022, teaching at the University of Bamberg.[18]

The incorporation of digital tools into pedagogy was a key concern for Folsom. In 1998, he was one of the scholars collaborating on the Department of Education-funded project The Classroom Electric which sought to bring "images of original manuscripts, rare photographs, notebooks, scrapbooks, letters, and maps" relating to Whitman and Dickinson in conversation with "cutting-edge scholarship" to create an educational website for teachers and students.[19] "As we navigate the new electronic Web," he wrote in a reflection on the effort, "we might imagine ourselves as hypertextual poets, creating new patterns of understanding and meaning, weaving the Web, or we might feel ourselves as trapped prey, enwebbed in a hopelessly vast and complex maze of information."[20] In 2012, Folsom and Christopher Merrill launched a collaboration between the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the Walt Whitman Archive called WhitmanWeb, which initially focused on a translation of "Song of Myself" into nine languages. This was followed by two massive open online courses (2014, 2016), co-taught by Merrill and Folsom and attended by thousands of Whitman readers from around the world.[21][22]

Folsom's Whitman Seminars, which he began offering at the University of Iowa in the 1980s, have been described as "legendary" by scholars of the poet[23] and had a lasting impact on future generations of academics.[24][25][26][27][28] Among Folsom's doctoral advisees were Sherry Ceniza,[29] Gregory Eiselein,[30] Tom Gannon,[31] and Ted Genoways.[32]

Folsom retired and was granted Emeritus status in 2023.[33]

Writings and influence

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Whitman studies

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Folsom was instrumental in the formation of Whitman studies as a field of professional academic inquiry. With William White, he founded the current journal of record for Whitman studies, the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review in 1983 (as a follow-up publication to the Walt Whitman Review),[34] founded the Whitman Studies Association (1989), and co-founded the Walt Whitman Archive (1995), one of the longest-running digital editorial projects in the United States.[35][36][37] For the Review, Folsom maintains a comprehensive, annotated bibliography of global Whitman scholarship, which is also available on the Whitman Archive.[38] For University of Iowa Press, he edits the long-running Iowa Whitman series.[39] He also serves as an Honorary Trustee for the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site.[40]

Folsom hosted a number of major conferences on Whitman, including the NEH-funded "Centennial Conference" (1992) in Iowa City, attended by over 150 Whitman scholars,[41] the "Whitman 2000" conference in Beijing (the first of its kind),[42], and "Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman," again at the University of Iowa, in 2005.[43] Each conference resulted in a scholarly book.

Folsom is one of the founding members of the Transatlantic Whitman Week, an international meeting and symposium that unites Whitman scholars and graduate students from around the world. Since 2007, the meeting has been held in places such as Germany, France, Brazil, and Poland.[44]

Literary criticism

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Folsom is a textual and biographical critic, whose research incorporates elements of close reading and contextual historical criticism. His work on Whitman in relation to book studies led to a reconsideration of how scholars treat the textual history of Leaves of Grass, with Folsom making a strong case for viewing each of the six major editions as distinct artistic expressions, not merely revisions toward a singular poetic statement.[45] Folsom's research into the first and third editions (1855, 1860) stands out in particular. After conducting a multi-year census of all the textual variants of the 1855 edition, for instance, he concluded that "there are far more variations from copy to copy than have been previously known" and demonstrated that the notorious missing final period of "Song of Myself"[46] had been a printing mishap.[45] Among his better known works are an essay revealing hidden spermatic designs Whitman employed in the 1860 edition of Leaves,[47] his attribution of the only surviving Whitman sound recording,[48][49] and his identification of a possible late-life series of nude photographs of the poet.[50][51] Folsom's over fifty published academic essays range widely and cover Whitman's engagement with such themes as baseball, race and Reconstruction, mathematics, Native Americans, and photography, as well as Whitman's influence on other poets.[16]

Folsom maintained a close relationship with the Iowa Writers' Workshop, including the International Writing Program, and formed academic friendships with authors who informed his teaching and research, such as Marvin Bell, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, James Galvin, Allen Ginsberg, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Donald Justice, Galway Kinnell, Gerald Stern, and Yusef Komunyakaa.[52]

Walt Whitman Archive

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Together with Kenneth M. Price and Charles Green, Folsom began working on e-text versions of Leaves of Grass in the 1990s. Originally a CD-Rom-based project, the Walt Whitman Archive has since grown into an expansive, free-to-use (and partially open access) online archive.[53] Folsom directed seven major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that contributed to this growth (1985, 1990–1994, 2000–2003, 2003–2005, 2008–2011, 2013–2016, 2016–2020).[16] Today, the Whitman Archive makes available scholarly editions not only of all of Whitman's major books but also of his photographs, newspaper poetry, scribal documents, two-way correspondence, and a significant percentage of his journalism. It also hosts a biography of the poet written by Folsom and Price. The Whitman Archive has been the subject of a special issue forum in PMLA[54] and was awarded the C.F.W. Coker Award by the Society of American Archivists (2006)[55] and the Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship (2021).[56] "The Whitman Archive has the greatest promise for carrying on the scholarship I do on Whitman out into the general public," Folsom said in 2009.[57] He remains one of its co-directors, alongside Price and Matt Cohen.

Media appearances

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Throughout his career, Folsom appeared as a Whitman expert in a variety of media formats, including for PBS's American Experience (Walt Whitman), various NPR programs like Talk of the Nation, On the Media, and Morning Edition, as well as CBS Sunday Morning[10] and the New York Times.[58]

Personal life

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Folsom is married to Pat Folsom, a retired academic advisor at the University of Iowa. The Pat Folsom Excellence in Academic Advising Award is named after her.[59] Together, they have a son.[60]

Selected bibliography

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Selected books (as author or editor)
  • Folsom, Ed. Walt Whitman's Native Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0521453578.
  • Perlman, Jim, Ed Folsom, and Dan Campion, eds. Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song. Rev. ed. Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press, 1998.
  • Folsom, Ed, ed. Whitman East and West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002.
  • Folsom, Ed. Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary. Iowa City: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa, 2005. ISBN 0874141532.
  • Folsom, Ed, and Christopher Merrill. Song of Myself: With a Complete Commentary. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016.
Selected articles and chapters
  • Folsom, L. Edwin. "'The Souls That Snow': Winter in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson." American Literature, vol. 47, no. 3, Nov. 1975, pp. 361–376.
  • Folsom, Ed. "Walt Whitman's 'Calamus' Photographs." In Breaking Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies, edited by Betsy Erkkila and Jay Grossman, 193–219. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Folsom, Ed. "'What a Filthy Presidentiad!': Clinton's Whitman, Bush's Whitman, and Whitman's America." Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 81, no. 2, Spring 2005, pp. 96–113.
  • Folsom, Ed. "The Census of the 1855 Leaves of Grass: A Preliminary Report." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 24, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 71–84.
  • Folsom, Ed. "'A spirt of my own seminal wet': Spermatoid Design in Walt Whitman's 1860 Leaves of Grass." Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 4 (2010): 585–600.
  • Folsom, Ed. "'That towering bulge of pure white': Whitman, Melville, the Capitol Dome, and Black America." Leviathan 16, no. 1 (March 2014): 87–120.
  • Folsom, Ed. "Whitman Left to His Own Devices." In The Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, edited by Kenneth M. Price and Stefan Schöberlein, 9–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Notes

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  1. 1 2 "5Q Interview (UI Press Edition): Ed Folsom". The Writing University. University of Iowa. 2020-03-09. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 "Ed Folsom". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Ed Folsom". Walt Whitman Week 2011. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Ed Folsom". Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. University of Iowa. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Walt Whitman-Experte besucht Dortmund: TU Dortmund verleiht Ehrendoktorwürde an Professor Ed Folsom von der University of Iowa" (PDF) (Press release). TU Dortmund. 2023-11-28.
  6. ↑ "Walt Whitman Left to His Own Devices — Ed Folsom, Ph.D." Emeritus Faculty Council. University of Iowa. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  7. ↑ "Whitman Expert Folsom Named Miller Professor". Iowa City Press-Citizen. Iowa City, Iowa. June 27, 1997. p. 7. Folsom … has been called the nation's leading scholar on the works of American poet Walt Whitman
  8. ↑ "Two UI Professors Win Guggenheim Awards". The Gazette. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. April 11, 2007. p. 13. Folsom … is one of the world's foremost experts on Walt Whitman
  9. ↑ "RIHS Names Richard Ring Deputy Executive Director for Collections and Interpretation". The Rhode Island Historical Society. 2017-11-30. Retrieved 2026-07-11. Professor Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), a world authority on Whitman and founder of the Walt Whitman Archive, was brought to campus to speak.
  10. 1 2 "Distinguished Achievement Citation: Lowell "Ed" Folsom, Ph.D." (PDF). Ohio Wesleyan University. 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  11. ↑ "Walt Whitman-Experte besucht Dortmund: TU Dortmund verleiht Ehrendoktorwürde an Professor Ed Folsom von der University of Iowa" (PDF) (Press release) (in German). TU Dortmund. 2023-11-28. Retrieved 9 July 2026. Er gilt als einer der weltweit führenden Whitman-Forscher*innen. [He is considered one of the world's leading Whitman scholars.]
  12. ↑ "Staff". The Walt Whitman Archive. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  13. ↑ "Spotlight: Iowa City twined with the chant of his soul". The Daily Iowan. October 15, 2009. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  14. ↑ Folsom, Lowell Edwin (1976). America, the Metaphor: Place as Person as Poem as Poet (PhD dissertation). University of Rochester – via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
  15. ↑ Folsom, Ed (2024). "W.S. Merwin's Search for Walt Whitman, Whoever He Was". Transatlantica. 2: 2. doi:10.4000/134gm.
  16. 1 2 3 Folsom, Ed. "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Department of English, University of Iowa. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 January 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  17. ↑ "Lowell Folsom". Fulbright Scholar Directory. Institute of International Education (Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program). Retrieved 2026-07-11.
  18. ↑ "Prof. Ed Folsom (2022)". Professur für Amerikanistik, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. University of Bamberg. Retrieved 2026-07-11.
  19. ↑ Price, Kenneth M.; Smith, Martha Nell (eds.). "Introduction". The Classroom Electric: Dickinson, Whitman, and American Culture. Archived from the original on June 17, 2016.
  20. ↑ "Ed Folsom". MITHologies. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland. Archived from the original on December 5, 2004.
  21. ↑ "About". WhitmanWeb. International Writing Program, University of Iowa. Retrieved July 10, 2026.
  22. ↑ Drew Bulman, "Education for all part deux: UI gears up for its next round of massive open online courses", Little Village, May 28, 2014.
  23. ↑ Graber, Samuel (2019). Twice-Divided Nation: National Memory, Transatlantic News, and American Literature in the Civil War Era. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-8139-4238-4.
  24. ↑ Buinicki, Martin T. (2011). Walt Whitman's Reconstruction: Poetry and Publishing between Memory and History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. x. ISBN 978-1-60938-069-4.
  25. ↑ Mancuso, Luke (1997). The Strange Sad War Revolving: Walt Whitman, Reconstruction, and the Emergence of Black Citizenship, 1865–1876. Columbia, SC: Camden House. p. xiii. ISBN 978-1-57113-125-6.
  26. ↑ Mills, Bruce (2005). Poe, Fuller, and the Mesmeric Arts: Transition States in the American Renaissance. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-8262-1610-6.
  27. ↑ Perlman, Jim; Folsom, Ed; Campion, Dan, eds. (1998). Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Revised ed.). Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press. p. 530.
  28. ↑ Sayre, Robert F., ed. (1999). Recovering the Prairie. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. viii. ISBN 978-0-299-16460-7.
  29. ↑ Ceniza, Sherry (1990). Walt Whitman and 'Woman under the new dispensation': The influence of Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, Abby Hills Price, Paulina Wright Davis, and Ernestine L. Rose on Whitman's poetry and prose (PhD dissertation). University of Iowa. Order No. 303859676 – via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
  30. ↑ Eiselein, Gregory J. (1993). Humanitarian Works: Writing, Reform, and Eccentric Benevolence in the Civil War Era (PhD dissertation). University of Iowa. Order No. 9334593 – via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
  31. ↑ Gannon, Thomas C. (2003). The Avian as Native and Natured Other: Re-imagining the Bird, from British Romanticism to Contemporary Native American Literature (PhD dissertation). University of Iowa. Order No. 3087628 – via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
  32. ↑ Genoways, Ted H. (2007). Whitman's Lost War: America's Poet during the Forgotten Years of 1860–1862 (PhD dissertation). University of Iowa. Order No. 3281361 – via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
  33. ↑ "Farewell to Dr. Ed Folsom" (PDF). Out of Iowa. University of Iowa Department of English. 2022. Retrieved 2026-07-14.
  34. ↑ Blalock, Stephanie; Masada, Jennifer (April 29, 2016). "University of Iowa Journal Publishes Newly Found Whitman Writings". Iowa Now. University of Iowa. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  35. ↑ Benton, Thomas H. (July 6, 2007). "Authoritative Online Editions". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  36. ↑ "Prizes and Awards". The Society for Textual Scholarship. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  37. ↑ Robertson, Michael (December 2012). "The Walt Whitman Archive". Journal of American History. 99 (3): 1019–1020. doi:10.1093/jahist/jas486. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  38. ↑ "Bibliography". Walt Whitman Archive. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  39. ↑ "Iowa Whitman". University of Iowa Press. University of Iowa. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  40. ↑ "About WWBA". Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  41. ↑ Folsom, Ed, ed. (1994). Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. xvi. ISBN 0877454590.
  42. ↑ "How to interpret Walt Whitman and His Leaves of Grass in the 21st Century". Broadyard Workshop. Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University. October 12, 2019.
  43. ↑ Folsom, Ed (2006). "Introduction: Whitman as a Bookmaker". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 24 (2/3): 69.
  44. ↑ "Past Conferences". The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  45. 1 2 Folsom, Ed (2005). Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary. Iowa City: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. ISBN 0874141532. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  46. ↑ Golden, Arthur (Spring 1986). "The Ending of the 1855 Version of "Song of Myself"" (PDF). Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 3 (4): 27. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  47. ↑ Folsom, Ed (2010). "'A spirt of my own seminal wet': Spermatoid Design in Walt Whitman's 1860 Leaves of Grass". Huntington Library Quarterly. 73 (4): 585–600. JSTOR 10.1525/hlq.2010.73.4.585.
  48. ↑ Folsom, Ed (Spring 1992). "The Whitman Recording". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 9 (4): 214–216. doi:10.13008/2153-3695.1340. ISSN 0737-0679.
  49. ↑ Grimes, William (March 16, 1992). "Poem Is Whitman's, Is the Voice?". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2026.
  50. ↑ Folsom, Ed (1996). "Walt Whitman's 'Calamus' Photographs". In Erkkila, Betsy; Grossman, Jay (eds.). Breaking Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 193–219.
  51. ↑ Ryan, Hugh (May 31, 2017). "Historians Are Debating if Walt Whitman Took a Dick Pic". Vice. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  52. ↑ Folsom, Ed (2024). "W.S. Merwin's Search for Walt Whitman, Whoever He Was". Transatlantica. 2: 4. doi:10.4000/134gm.
  53. ↑ "History of the Project". The Walt Whitman Archive. Retrieved 2026-07-10.
  54. ↑ "Special Topic Remapping Genre". PMLA. 122 (5). Modern Language Association. October 2007.
  55. ↑ "2006 Fellows and Award Recipients". Society of American Archivists. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  56. ↑ "Prizes and Awards". The Society for Textual Scholarship. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  57. ↑ "Spotlight: Iowa City twined with the chant of his soul". The Daily Iowan. October 15, 2009.
  58. ↑ Schuessler, Jennifer (February 20, 2017). "In a Walt Whitman Novel, Lost for 165 Years, Clues to 'Leaves of Grass'". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  59. ↑ "Pat Folsom Excellence in Academic Advising Award". Academic Advising Council, The University of Iowa. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  60. ↑ Folsom, Ed (1994). Walt Whitman's Native Representations. Cambridge University Press, p. xiv.
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