Brian Goodman's research and teaching range across several fields, including U.S. literature and culture, human rights, dissident literatures, and Jewish studies.
His current research explores how the intertwined histories of postwar literary culture, free expression, and human rights have been shaped through transnational cultural exchange. His book project (under contract at Harvard University Press) maps the circulation of literature and culture between the United States and the Eastern bloc, particularly Czechoslovakia, during the Cold War. A chapter from this project, entitled "Philip Roth's Other Europe," has been published in American Literary History, and his recent writing on free expression issues has appeared in Public Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Goodman is also an associate managing editor, focusing on Special Forums, at the digital, open-access Journal of Transnational American Studies.