Sebastian Lecourt received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston. His work focuses on Victorian literature and questions of secularization, colonialism, and world literature. His essays have also appeared in PMLA, Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Literature Compass, and he has held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, and Universität Konstanz. He is working on a new book project entitled The Genres of Comparative Religion, 1783-1947.