Before retiring, Timothy Erwin taught a variety of courses on the 18th century, from the Rise of the Novel to Jane Austen and Visual Culture to the Poetry of Abolition. He took the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he edited Chicago Review, and taught at universities on the East and West Coasts before moving to UNLV in 1990. His research involves the interrelations of literature, art, and media.

Erwin was awarded grants from the American Council of Learned Studies, the Black Mountain Institute of UNLV, the Clark Library at UCLA, the Houghton Library at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Yale Center for British Art. He taught twice as a visiting professor at the Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour in France, and also at University College Cork, Ireland, and was elected to the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association. He served twice as president of both the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and also for the Samuel Johnson Society of the West. He was twice named traveling lecturer for the Jane Austen Society of North America.

Erwin’s Textual Vision: Augustan Design and the Invention of Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Bucknell, 2015; pbk. 2017), was reviewed in Modern Philology, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century, and The Scriblerian. Other publications include five co-edited volumes of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture for the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (Johns Hopkins, 1998-2014); “Imagery” in The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford University Press, 2016); “Discourse and Period Style across the Arts,” Eighteenth-Century Life (2016); “The Changing Patterns of Iconology,” from W. J. T. Mitchell’s Image Theory: Living Pictures, ed. Krešimir Purgar (Routledge, 2017); “The Comic Visions of Emma Woodhouse,” from Jane Austen and Comedy, ed. Erin Goss (Bucknell / Rutgers, 2019); “Alexander Pope and a Carracci Venus at the Court of James II and Mary of Modena” (Huntington Library Quarterly, 2020); "Discours sur l’Œil: Roméo et Juliette et Marriage A-la-Mode de William Hogarth" (Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2022); “Book Illustration and The Deserted Village” (Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 2023); “Austen’s Oceans: New Contexts for Persuasion” (1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 2023); “Discourses of the Eye: Romeo and Juliet and Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode,” in Howard Weinbrot and the Precincts of Enlightenment: The Genius of Every Place, ed. Kevin L. Cope (Lehigh / Bloomsbury, 2024); and “Sister Arts,” Oliver Goldsmith in Context, ed. Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). Recent book reviews include Nicholas Mirzoeff’s How to See the World for Critical Inquiry (2018), Brycchan Carey’s The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807 for Modern Philology (2025), and Amandine Rabier’s exhibition catalogue Maria Cosway 1760–1838: The Exceptional Journey of an Artist 1760-1838 for The Scriblerian (2025). 

Timothy lives with his wife Clarissa in Henderson, NV, and enjoys tennis, swimming, and travel.