Dr. Sean Moore (Ph.D. Duke 2003, M.A. Georgetown 1995, B.A. UMASS 1991) has research and teaching interests focused on postcolonial, economic, and book history approaches to global eighteenth-century British, Irish and American studies. He is editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies, and has just completed a second monograph entitled "Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731-1814" (Oxford UP, 2019). This book studies how the transatlantic book trade – the purchase of London printed books by Americans eager for British cultural capital and identity – was enabled by the consumer habits, philanthropy , and reading of men engaged in slavery and related enterprises. His first monograph, "Swift, the Book, and the Irish Financial Revolution: Satire and Sovereignty in Colonial Ireland" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010), won the 2010 Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book from the American Conference for Irish Studies. It argues that Jonathan Swift helped to mobilize the Irish print media for the promotion of Ireland's cultural, political, and economic sovereignty. Moore's recent work in Atlantic studies includes an essay, "The Irish Contribution to the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Non-Importation and the Reception of Jonathan Swift's Irish Satires in Early America," in Early American Literature (2017). New contributions to British studies and financial history include an essay on John Dryden's reaction to the Stop of the Exchequer of 1672 – the only sovereign debt default in Britain's History – forthcoming in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (2020). Having served a three-year term as Director of the UNH Honors Program, Moore is particularly interested in working with undergraduates and graduate students who wish to pursue careers in academia, research libraries, museums, learned societies, and high schools. A former aide to U.S. Congressman Barney Frank and Fulbright Scholar to the Republic of Ireland, he also is interested in advising students going into public policy, international affairs, and communications.
Moore's articles have appeared in PMLA, Atlantic Studies, and other journals and essay collections. For one of these essays, he received the international Richard H. Rodino Prize from the Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies in Münster, Germany. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), American Antiquarian Society/National Endowment of the Humanities (AAS/NEH), the Library Company of Philadelphia/Mellon Foundation, the Preservation Society of Newport County (Newport Mansions), the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC), the John Carter Brown Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Fulbright program.
Moore, S. D. (2019). Slavery and the Making of the Early American Library British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731-1814. Oxford University Press, USA.
Moore, S. D. (2010). Swift, the Book, and the Irish Financial Revolution: Satire and Sovereignty in Colonial Ireland. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP.