Draft:Dr. Leonard Cassuto

Biography

Leonard Cassuto was born in New York City, where he attended public schools. He received his BA from Columbia University in 1981 and his master's and PhD degrees in English in 1985 and 1989 from Harvard University. He has taught at Fordham University since 1989, with the exception of a half-year in Tanzania as a Fulbright Lecturer. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Konstanz and Goethe University in Germany.

Cassuto is married to Debra Osofsky, an attorney and negotiator. They have a daughter, KC Osofsky.

Academic career

Cassuto's writing falls into two main categories. As a scholar of American literature and culture, he is the author of two monographs, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture (Columbia UP, 1997) and Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (Columbia UP 2009; nominated for the Edgar and Macavity Awards). He has also edited a number of volumes, most notably The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011; general editor); The Cambridge Companion to Baseball (2012; with Stephen Partridge. Winner of the Best Anthology Award from the North American Society of Sportswriters); and The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser (2004; with Clare Virginia Eby).

Cassuto has edited Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, a book series at Cambridge University Press, since 2017.

Cassuto has authored two influential books in the field of American higher education, his second main area of scholarly focus. The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Harvard UP, 2015) was followed by The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021; with Robert Weisbuch). Cassuto's longtime advocacy of student-centered graduate education to prepare PhDs for diverse career outcomes has drawn considerable attention and comment, and has also served as a blueprint for reform efforts at various universities.

These books grew out of Cassuto's work as a columnist on graduate education ("The Graduate Adviser") for The Chronicle of Higher Education, which he has penned regularly since 2010. Cassuto has also published widely in magazines and newspapers on a range of topics from science to music and sports, as well as literary criticism for general audiences. His work was anthologized in Best American Science Writing 2003.

In fall of 2024, Princeton University Press will publish Cassuto's new book, Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, "a guide to writing with the reader in mind."

Published works

Books

The Graduate School Mess, 2015

The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education, 2021

Articles

On the Dissertation: How to Find a Research Topic (July 2022)

Why Are We So Squeamish About Teaching ‘Skills’? (November 2023)

On the Dissertation: You Don’t Have to Write It in Order (February 2024)

A New Player Enters the Graduate-School Game (April 2024)