Donald E. Pease received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is presently the Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Pease is the author or Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writing in Cultural Context which won the Mark Ingraham Prize for the best book in the Hymanities in 1987, Pease is also the author of over seventy essays and the editor of eight volumes including: The American Renaissance Reconsidered, Cultures of US Imperialism (with Amy Kaplan), Revisionist Interventions into the American Canon, Postnational Narratives and Futures of American Studies (2002). The recipient of Guggenheim, Mellon, Ford, NEH, Dickey, Hewlett and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, Pease is the General Editor for the book series New Americanists at Duke University Press, the Founding Director of a Summer Institute for American Studies at Dartmouth, and the Head of Dartmouth's Liberal Studies Program.