Robert Appelbaum received his BA from the University of Chicago and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is professor emeritus of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a fellow of the Swedish Research Council. Usually he writes about literary history and cultural theory, but he is the author as well of a work of creative non-fiction, Working the Aisles: A Life in Consumption (London: Zero 2014) as well as a handful of short stories.