MLA Citation: Honored Scholar of Early American Literature 2002: Sacvan Bercovitch

The Division ofAmerican Literature to 1800 is charged to recognize on rare occasions the extraordinary contributions of scholars to early American studies. In 2002 we honor the work of Sacvan Bercovitch.

This designation is made in celebration of his work as an intellectual historian recovering the origins of American civil religion and the doctrine of American exceptionalism, his contributions as a literary historian exploring the jeremiad as an American cultural discourse, his literary criticism investigating Puritan typology and hermeneutics, and his theoretical labor exploring the tensions between consensus and dissensus in American self-understanding and scholarship. We also honor his distinguished work as editor of The Cambridge History of American Literature, as ambassador of American studies in the global republic of letters, as translator of Yiddish literature into English, and as a teacher and mentor of scholars at Columbia and Harvard Universities.