Gerald Peters earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He is Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine, where he teaches courses in ancient literature, autobiography, critical theory, and the novel. His research interests include various "discourses of self-determination" ranging from diaries and travel journals to confessions, autobiographies, and the Bildungsroman. His publications include Diary of Anna Baerg, 1917-1924; The Mutilating God: Authorship and Authority in the Narrative of Conversion; Autobiography and Postmodernism; and Rereading Goethe, Rethinking Culture.