Howard Bruce Franklin is an American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects. As of 1987, he is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar and has served as president of the Melville Society. His award-winning books and teaching on science fiction played a major role in establishing academic study of the genre. His books on American prison literature have been said to open an entirely new field of study. His most recent work has... focused on relations between the marine environment and American cultural history. In 2008, the American Studies Association awarded him the Pearson-Bode Prize for Lifetime Achievement in American Studies. Born in Brooklyn in February 1934, Franklin graduated from Amherst College in 1955, and served in the US Air Force from 1956 to 1959. After serving three years as a navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command, Franklin got his doctorate at Stanford University in 1961 and then became an associate professor of English there.
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