Faculty Bookshelf, by Nicole Warren and
John Koblin
In the last year or so,
two faculty books won awards, and thirteen English professors
published books:
Kate Flint won the British Academy's Mary
Rose Crawshay Prize in 2002, for her book The Victorians
and the Visual Imagination. The prize is awarded annually
to two women who have published outstanding historical or
critical work on English literature. Professor Flint's book
examines a wide variety of Victorian visual and textual materials,
arguing that emphasis on nineteenth-century realism has obscured
the Victorians' equal and opposite stress on vision, whether
imaginative or "supernatural."
Jonah Siegel won the Northeast Victorian
Studies Association's Sonya Rudikoff Prize for the Best First
Book of the Year, for his book Desire and Excess: The
Nineteenth-Century Culture of Art. The prize is given
annually to the best book on Victorian literature or culture
by a first-time author. Professor Siegel's book explores the
rise of the modern idea of the artist in the nineteenth century,
arguing that artistic controversies commonly associated with
the modernist and postmodernist movements have their roots
in the Victorian era.
Christine Chism published Alliterative
Revivals, a study of late medieval alliterative romance
that shifts focus away from the formal aspects of these works
to examine how the poems brought British history to life for
their original audiences.
Anne Cotterill published Digressive
Voices in Early Modern English Literature, an examination
of digressive speakers and verbal technique in nondramatic
texts by Donne, Marvell, Browne, Milton, and Dryden.
Marianne DeKoven edited Feminist Locations:
Global and Local, Theory and Practice, a collection of
essays looking to the future of feminist theory and practice
in various postmodern contexts.
Brent Edwards published The Practice
of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black
Internationalism (see
article).
David L. Eng edited, with David Kazanjian,
Loss: The Politics of Mourning, a collection of essays
by political theorists, film and literary critics, museum
curators, feminists, psychoanalysts, and AIDS activists that
explores the humane and productive possibilities in the workings
of witness, memory, and melancholy.
William H. Galperin published The Historical
Austen, a reconsideration of Austen's place and role
in the history of the English novel that argues for the oppositional
nature of her works.
Myra Jehlen published Readings at the
Edge of Literature, a collection of essays demonstrating
the crucial role of the writing process in unfolding the opposing
ideals of the American project, like universal equality and
the pursuit of empire, or self-reliance and social responsibility.
George L. Levine published Dying to
Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England
(see article).
Marc Manganaro published Culture, 1922:
The Emergence of a Concept, in which he traces the intellectual
and institutional uses of the concept of culture through the
first half of the twentieth century, examining opposing notions
of culture as elite knowledge and culture as a set of common,
shared values.
Meredith L. McGill published American
Literature and the Culture of Reprinting 1834-1853, an
analysis of the way literary piracy during the antebellum
period contributed to the structure of the American publishing
market.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker published The
Volcano Sequence, her tenth book of poems (see
article).
Kurt Spellmeyer published Arts of Living:
Reinventing the Humanities for the Twenty-First Century,
a social history of the humanities and a proposal for the
future arguing that education needs to escape the "culture
wars" in order to address the major crises of the next
century.
Michael Warner published Publics and
Counterpublics, an investigation into how the idea of
a public as a central fiction of modern life informs our literature,
politics, and culture.
Related Links
Meet
the Faculty lists the research interests and projects
of all English Department members
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