Dan Mrozowski studied 20th-century American literature, with an emphasis on Cold War fiction, as an undergraduate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  While pursuing this interest as a graduate student at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, he found a passion for the methods of American Studies and literary history.  This passion led him to a concentration on 19th-century American literature and its intersection with business history.  His teaching practices are informed by a sensitivity to writing as a purposeful, formal discourse engaged with the ideas and genres of specific historical contexts.  Through the close scrutiny of the formal choices writers make in those contexts, he hopes that students might gain fluency in American literature, while also producing lucid arguments and connecting that literature to their own lives.  At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, he taught the American literature survey sequence, 20th-century American poetry, literature and public life, and courses in literary theory.   He is currently working on a book manuscript on the rise of the corporation and its influence on American fiction during the Gilded Age.