John Kleiner is a professor of English at Williams College. He is a scholar of classical and medieval literature whose work has been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The author of Mismapping the Underworld: Error in Dante's "Comedy," he is at work on a new book, The Art of Losing: Versions of Failure from Virgil to Shakespeare. His articles and essays include "On Failing One's Teachers," "Criminal Invention," and "Diffusion of hydrogen in a' -VHx." He has taught courses on Shakespeare, expository writing, Chaucer, Dante, allegory, Hollywood film, journalism, and violence. He has a B.A. in religion and physics from Amherst College, an M.S. in physics from Cornell University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.

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