As a young author, James Fenimore Cooper set out to write a series of Revolutionary War era novels, but abruptly changed his plans after his first visit in 1825 to several classic French and Indian War sites in northern New York. Professor Wayne Franklin of Northeastern University explains how *The Last of the Mohicans* the first of Cooper's many "colonial" novels, helped to create a popular understanding of the discontinuities and radical disruptions of this country's first 150 years.
Wayne Franklin is a Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature who was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on American writer James Fennimore Cooper. Franklin is Northeastern's second English faculty member in its history to garner such an award and was one of 185 grantees chosen from among 3,200 applicants to the Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. Franklin's Guggenheim fellowship will enable the continuation of his work and research on American writer James Fenimore Cooper, the American novelist credited with the invention of the frontier novel, the sea novel, and the American historical romance.