Lars Erik Larson

Short Biography

A primary interest in literature’s spatial turn drives Lars Erik Larson’s work on representations of cities, landscapes, and regions (particularly the American West), as well as the highway. Like the authors explored in his article, he is working on a study of American road literature, exploring the under-recognized impulses of social restraint within the genre’s well-publicized gestures of freedom. His essay ‘Free Ways and Straight Roads: The Interstates of Sal Paradise and 1950s America’ is included in What’s Your Road, Man?: Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (eds. Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). Larson is an assistant professor in Oregon at the University of Portland and teaches courses in American literature, culture, and the visual arts. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from UCLA.