• Professor of American Studies, Penn State

Dr. Haddad holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas (2002), an M.A. in English from Yale (1996), and an A.B. in English from Harvard (1991). He regularly teaches undergraduate courses on American popular culture, the Asian American experience, the American Renaissance, and the Gilded Age. At the graduate level, he offers seminars on nineteenth-century America, research methods, American literature, and“pivotal texts” in American cultural history – texts that started something new or forced the culture to change directions. He has been the recipient of the Faculty Service Award, the Faculty Teaching Award, and the James Jordan Award for teaching excellence.

While teaching in China and Japan in the 1990s, Dr. Haddad developed an interest in America's historical contact with Asia that is reflected in his scholarly work. His first book, The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776-1876, was published by Columbia University Press in 2006. It investigated ways Americans learned about China in the nineteenth century: museum exhibits, trade objects, travel writing, missionary literature, panoramic paintings, and international expositions. In 2010-2011, he held a Fulbright grant for research and teaching at the University of Hong Kong. That experience led to his second book, which examines the America's early relationship with China: America's First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation (Temple University Press, 2013). His third book, Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance, and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China, explains how American missionaries evolved from being strictly evangelists to being exporters of culture – founders of schools, colleges, museums, hospitals, and YMCA chapters (Temple University Press, 2023). In the area of popular culture, he has recently written a cultural history of Hersheypark titled Thrill Ride: The Transformation of Hersheypark (Penn State University Press, 2025).

• –present Professor of American Studies, Penn State

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