Derek Pacheco

Derek Pacheco (Ph.D. at UCLA, 2006) is an associate professor of English at ASU, having joined the department from Purdue University in 2024. His research and teaching interests include: nineteenth-century literature; children’s and young adult literature; print culture and book history; race, class, and gender in nineteenth-century literature.  

Over his career, Prof. Pacheco has taught a a wide range of undergraduate and graduate literature courses. Classes taught include: American Literature to 1865; Intro to Lit Theory; Literature for Children; Young Adult Literature; Intro to Game Studies; Your Degree in the World (Career Exploration); Approaches to Research (Intro to English Studies); Antebellum American Literature; Later Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Teaching Literature at the College Level; and Scholarly Writing & Publishing.

He has earned numerous undergraduate teaching awards, including the Charles B. Murphy Award, the highest undergraduate teaching award Purdue bestows.

Publications:

“’Funny Queer Fits’: Masculinity and Desire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.” Children’s Literature Quarterly, fall 2021, volume 46, number 3, pp. 263-282.

“Hawthorne and the American Revolution.” Hawthorne in Context, edited by Monika Elbert, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 35-45.

“Engendering Fantasy in Romantic Children’s Fiction.” Romantic Education in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, edited by Monika Elbert and Lesley Ginsberg, Routledge, 2015, pp. 211-228. 

Moral Enterprise: Literature and Education in Antebellum America. The Ohio State University Press, 2013. Paperback reissue – July 2017.

“‘Dwarves and Hobgoblins’: Hawthorne, Gothic Children’s Literature, and A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, volume 38, number 2, fall 2012, pp. 47-71.

"‘Vanished Scenes…Pictured in the Air’: Hawthorne, Indian Removal, and The Whole History of Grandfather’s Chair,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, volume 36, number 1, spring 2010, pp. 186-211.

"‘Disorders of the Circulating Medium’: Hawthorne’s Early Children’s Literature," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, volume 53, number 3, fall 2007, pp. 282-319.