Award-winning Professor Joel Faflak is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Director of School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities and Full Professor in Department of English and Writing Studies, and the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University where he teaches, among other things, courses on literature, culture, and leadership. As the founding director of the Faculty’s School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities, Dr. Faflak led the creation of a unique interdisciplinary program that is fully engaged with the community. 

Faflak researches British literature and thought 1750-1850, with a focus on the tumultuous and paradigm-shattering Romantic literature, philosophy, and culture (roughly 1789-1832) as they emerge from the Enlightenment and get transformed (or not) in the Victorian period. His primary interest has been in Romantic psychology, particularly its relationship to psychoanalysis and psychiatry. His interests in psychiatry and happiness also inform a broader interest in popular culture and in the role culture, intellectualism, hope, and leadership play in the public sphere. Faflak is the editor of several books, including Nervous Reactions: Victorian Recollections of Romanticism (coedited with Julia M. Wright), and Sanity, Madness, Transformation: The Psyche in Romanticism.