Jordan Sillars is a fourth-year Ph.D. student studying American literature at Baylor University. He received his M.A. in English from the University of Toronto, and his B.A. in Literature from Patrick Henry College. His current research project investigates how Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and Catharine Maria Sedgwick imagined the natural world in their stories of survival on the American frontier. He’s also interested in the intersection of politics and technology in American literature, especially in the works of Walt Whitman. His most recent article, which discusses T.B. Thorpe’s famous short story “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” is forthcoming in the South Central Review.