Brian Goodman

Brian K. Goodman is a literary historian of the Cold War and its aftermath. His research explores how dissenting writers have shaped our ideas about human rights, censorship, and free expression. His first book, The Nonconformists: American and Czech Writers across the Iron Curtain (Harvard UP, 2023), received the Pamela Jensen Award from the American Political Science Association and Honorable Mention for the USC Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. His writing has appeared in American Literary History, LitHub, Public Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books. 

At ASU, Goodman teaches courses on US literature and culture, American Jewish writers, literature and human rights, and Cold War literary culture. He was the 2024 recipient of the Zebulon Pearce Distinguished Teaching Award in the Humanities. 

Before coming to ASU, Goodman was a postdoctoral instructor at the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. At ASU, he is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, & East European Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies. In 2026, he will be a Budapest Open Society Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University.