Professor Pelletier's research focuses on early-U.S. literature and culture. His first book, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism: Love and Fear in U.S. Antebellum Literature (University of Georgia Press), examines how antislavery writers used warnings of God's apocalyptic wrath, and the terror these warnings produced, to generate interracial sympathy. With readings of diverse figures like David Walker, Nat Turner, Maria Stewart, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown, Professor Pelletier illustrates how antislavery discourse worked to redefine violence and vengeance as the ultimate expression (rather than denial) of love and sympathy.
His current research examines western comedic traditions, with a special emphasis on American humor writing and performance, including humor from the Old Southwest and vaudeville through twentieth-century film and the rise of stand-up comedy. He has an article-in-progess titled “‘The Reign of Humbug’: Joseph G. Baldwin, P.T. Barnum, and the Economy of American Humor.”
Apocalyptic Sentimentalism: Love and Fear in US Antebellum Literature (University of Georgia Press, 2015)
“The Last Cleric: Ann Douglas, Intellectual Authority, and the Place of Feminization at Forty,” co-written with Claudia Stokes and Abram Van Engen, J19 forthcoming.
"David Walker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Logic of Sentimental Terror." African American Review 46.2-3 (Summer/Fall 2013): 255-269.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Apocalyptic Sentimentalism.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 20.4 (2009): 266-287.
Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialistic Theory of Becoming, Review essay, Cultural Critique (Fall 2004).
