Life

He graduated from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 and from Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, with a Ph.D. At Boston College

Boston College

Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

, he directs both the American Studies Program and the Lowell Humanities Series. He also teaches writing in the English department and courses in the department of American Studies.

In 2006, he gave lectures in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a U.S. Speaker and Specialist Grant from the State Department. He is an editor of the "Chicago Visions and Revisions" series at the University of Chicago Press.

He writes for the New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post Magazine. His work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, American Quarterly, The American Scholar, Raritan, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Transition, Harper's, DoubleTake, Boston, Slate, The Believer, TriQuarterly, Yale Alumni Magazine, and The Best American Essays.

Awards

• 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
  
  
• Howard fellowships
• Du Bois fellowships
• 2007 Whiting Writers' Award
  Whiting Writers' Award
  The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...
  
  
• L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award
  L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award
  The L.L. Winship/ PEN New England Award is awarded annually by PEN New England to honor a New England author or book with a New England setting or subject. The award was established in 1975 by The Boston Globe in conjunction with PEN to honor the veteran Boston Globe editor Laurence L. Winship. It...
  
  
• The American Scholar's prizes for Best Essay

Works

• "Bullies", Slate, Alan E. Kazdin, Carlo Rotella, Aug. 11, 2009
• "Pulp History," Raritan 27.1 (Summer 2007): 11-36.
• "The Two Jameses," The Believer (April, 2007): 49-54.
• http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1128644171.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Sep+17%2C+2006&author=Carlo+Rotella&pub=The+Washington+Post&edition=&startpage=W.24&desc=The+Elements+of+Providence%3B+A+city+that+had+fallen+into+ruin+now+burns+brightly+again+--+thanks+in+part+to+WaterFire%2Ca+burgeoning+festival+that+combines+ritual%2C+reverence+and+urban+vitality"The Elements of Providence,"] Washington Post Magazine (September 17, 2006): 24-28, 51-53.
• "The Kingdom and the Power," Boston (August 2006): 69-84.

External links

• "A Professor Who Packs a Real Punch", The Boston College Chronicle, Stephen Gawlik, March 15, 2001