Ronald Hoag is on the board of directors of The Thoreau Society, the oldest (1941) and largest (2000 members) society devoted to an American author. For seven years he served as editor of The Concord Saunterer, the society's well-regarded scholarly journal. Hoag published (with Bradley Dean) a book-length study of Henry Thoreau's career as a lecturer in two issues of Studies in the American Renaissance. His essays on Thoreau, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, John Updike, and other American writers have appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau and the journals Texas Studies in Literature and Language, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, The Concord Saunterer, Thoreau Society Bulletin, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Fiction, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Literary Journal, South Atlantic Review, Paris Review, and others.

Degrees
B.A. Middlebury College
M.A. Duke University
M.A. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Ph.D. UNC-Chapel Hill

Primary Areas of Research/Teaching
19th-Century American Literature
Henry Thoreau
Ralph W. Emerson
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Mark Twain


Courses Taught
7265: Special Topics Seminar in American Literature
4250: American Literature 1865-1920
4200: American Literature 1820-1865
3860: Introduction to Nonfiction Writing
3420: The Short Story
2200: Major American Writers
2000: Interpreting Literature
1000: Appreciating Literature