Joseph Albernaz mines the poetry and thought of the Romantic period (roughly 1760–1830) to uncover a new concept of community: a community that is groundless, and not based in a common nature, identity, trait, or essence. He deploys this radical idea of community to rethink important issues raised in literature, politics, and ecology in the Romantic period and today.

2017– 18 Professor Norman Jacobson Memorial Fellow