When it comes to teaching, Walt Herbert hoped that his classes left a lasting impression on his students. "I hope I have left my students with the experience of well-designed courses and class discussions grounded in the strongest intellectual authority I can muster," states Herbert. "I hope I have attuned to the vital human concerns that press upon them as they move through the transformations that inevitably take place in the college years, and as they equip themselves to move into fulfilling lives that pursue justice and the common good."

Joining Southwestern's English department in 1975, Herbert instantly became involved on campus. He served as the department chair from 1976-1981 and has served on numerous additional committees and councils, including the Presidential Search Committee of the Board of Trustees and the Core Values Council. He also assisted in the creation of the First Year Colloquium, the Feminist Studies Program and the Jessie Daniel Ames Lecture Series. Additionally, Herbert took part in the negotiations that permitted the library to construct several new alcoves and assisted in locating the funding to inaugurate the Writer's Voice series. Most recently, Herbert took part in the discussions that produced Southwestern's new sexual misconduct policy.

In 1979, Herbert helped create the Brown Symposium, which brings distinguished scholars to Southwestern. He has sponsored six of them; Interpretation: Meaning and the Substance of Human Existence (1980), Womanhood, Manhood and Public Life (1986), Discoveries of America (1992), Drawing and Crossing Boundaries: The Roots of Texas Music (1997), Shakespeares!! (2001) and For Love and Justice: Breaking the Cycle of Intimate Violence (2005).

Stemming from his on-campus involvement and scholarly success, Herbert was named the University Scholar and was awarded the Herman Brown Chair in English. He comments, "Serving as the Herman Brown Chair in English, and as University Scholar, has provided resources for the pursuit of my many activities. I am profoundly grateful to have had this opportunity, and have sought to fulfill the expectations it has imposed on me."

Herbert's work also has earned him several awards including the NEH Younger Humanist Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, and the William C. Finch Distinguished Professorship at Southwestern. In 1990, Herbert was appointed the Beckman Visiting Professor in the English Department at the University of California in Berkeley.

In his studies of literature, Herbert has become a renowned scholar. "My scholarly writing has applied insights from interpretive social science to the historical contexts of literary creation," states Herbert. "I also was among the first bring this 'new historicism' to the study of American literature." Herbert has written Moby-Dick and Calvinism: A World Dismantled (1977), Marquesan Encounters: Melville and the Meaning of Civilization (1980), Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Middle Class Family (1993) and Sexual Violence and American Manhood (2002). Within these books and other articles, Herbert discusses religious questions, issues of imperialism, gender and family history and issues of sexual violence. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The London Times Literary Supplement and the Los Angeles Times.

In addition to writing, Herbert has given guest lectures across the United States, at Sapporo University in Japan and Nihon University in Tokyo. Additionally, Herbert served as president of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, and as a member of the Board of Editors for American Literature and Texas Studies in Language and Literature journals. He also has served as a member of the board at St. Stephen's School in Austin, the Institute for Humanities in Salado, and Texas Folklife Resources. Since 1998, Herbert has served on the Radio Committee of the Modern Language Association--which chooses topics and participants for "What's the Word," an NPR program that addresses the ways in which the study of literature and language enriches and illuminates people's lives.

This past semester, Herbert taught his last course at Southwestern as he retired in May. "In my retirement, I plan to continue several of my current activities. But for a time I intend to drift, to find out what this new terrain feels like by wandering around on it."