Hi. My name is Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, but everybody calls me Fitz.
I’m an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Professional Writing Concentration at Salem State University. I’m the author of How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists, a re-consideration of the genre of literary journalism with a focus on the role that women writers played in its nineteenth century origins, and how that influence shaped the genre as it evolved into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You can read more about it here.
My research interests include literary journalism, media studies, American studies, and religion. I’m a collaborator on the Viral Texts Project and former research assistant with the Women Writers Project.
I’ve published articles and essays in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and others. Links to some of those are here.
In 2013, Bondfire Books published my first book titled Not Your Mother’s Morals: How the New Sincerity is Changing Pop Culture for the Better. You can read more about the book here.
I earned my PhD in English from Northeastern University and I’ve taught writing and journalism at several colleges and universities in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.
I contribute to a weekly(ish) newsletter called “…in Progress.” You can read and subscribe here.
Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, or just to say hi.
