Christopher Schaberg

Christopher Schaberg is a writer, editor, and scholar of contemporary literature, environmental thought, and the culture of air travel.  

He is the author of nine books, including The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight, Grounded: Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic, Fly-Fishing, and most recently Adventure: An Argument for Limits. Schaberg’s writings on airports and air travel have inspired an exhibit at the City Gallery Wellington, were featured on To the Best of Our Knowledge, and have been reviewed in The New Yorker. Schaberg is also a founding co-editor of Object Lessons, a public scholarship project dedicated to the hidden lives of ordinary things.  

Schaberg’s interest in public scholarship emerged from years of teaching workshops on editing, publishing, and short-essay writing. Whether training undergraduates to pitch and publish essays and to apply for professional positions in editing and publishing, or mentoring graduate students and faculty on how to write for general audiences, Schaberg enjoys the challenges that come from translating academic research and rigor into forms that can benefit broad public audiences.  

Schaberg holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Davis, and before coming to Wash U he was the Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Center for Editing & Publishing at Loyola University New Orleans.  

Recent publications: 

“Reimagining the Academic Book Launch” Inside Higher Ed (April, 2023) 

“I Tried to Teach ChatGPT to Flyfish. It Was a Disaster” The Flyfish Journal (April, 2023) 

Pedagogy of the Depressed Bloomsbury (January, 2022) 

“Social Media Isn’t the Only Way to Have Public Impact” Times Higher Ed (December, 2022) 

“A Paragon of Nature Writing: On Doug Peacock’s Was It Worth It?” The Millions (September, 2022)