Emma Butler-Probst
Emma Butler-Probst is a Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Teaching Associate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Emma’s research focuses on how Herman Melville and other nineteenth-century authors use scenes of shared Bible reading to comment on the social dynamic of belief and to negotiate larger intercultural relationships in the United States. In a larger sense, she is fascinated by questions of intertextuality, epistemology, and the many ways that authors’ philosophical and religious values are shaped by their reading and then manifested in their writing. Emma’s undergraduate thesis examined Melville’s depiction of madness as a warning against the obsessive pursuit of absolute truth, and her M.A. thesis explored Melville’s ongoing cyclical journey from skepticism to faith and back again. Emma has also published articles on Melville’s influence on George Eliot and Ishmael’s multicultural redemption through his relationship with Queequeg.