William Huntting Howell (Ph.D. Northwestern) is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. He studies and teaches American literature and culture, with a focus on the latter half of the eighteenth century. He is particularly interested in the relationships between literature, politics, and material culture; his work draws on science and technology studies, gender theory, and social history as well as literary criticism. He is currently writing a book about imitation and un-exceptionalism in the years following the American Revolution.