Department of English

Professor Walkowitz has published widely in the fields of modernist studies, twentieth-century British literature, the contemporary novel, and world literature. Her research focuses on the intersections between cosmopolitan aspirations and modernist aesthetics, and on transnational approaches to literary history. Walkowitz’s first book, Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism beyond the Nation (2006), was awarded Honorable Mention for the best book in narrative studies from the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She is editor or coeditor of seven books, including Bad Modernisms (2006, with Douglas Mao), The Turn to Ethics (with Marjorie Garber and Beatrice Hanssen, 2000) and Immigrant Fictions (2007). She is an editor of the journal Contemporary Literature and has served on the boards of the Modernist Studies Association and the American Comparative Literature Association. At Rutgers, Walkowitz serves on the Executive Committee of the Center for Cultural Analysis and runs a seminar series on Modernism & Globalization.

Since 2006, Walkowitz has published six essays related to a new book project entitled “Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature.” She is also developing, with Eric Hayot, “A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism,” an anthology of experimental essays that explore conjunctions between modernist literature and world literature. With Sarah Cole at Columbia, she has recently launched the NYNJ Modernism Seminar. She is also the co-editor, with Matthew Hart and David James, of "Literature Now," a new book series devoted to scholarship on contemporary writing. Published by Columbia University Press, Literature Now brings together ambitious books that focus on the literature of the present and on the ways we understand the meaning of literature in the present.

Walkowitz is the recipient of several major national and university fellowships, including a Marshall Scholarship, a Javits Fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, and three teaching prizes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• "Why Transnational Modernism Can't Be All in One Language"
  English Language Notes (2011)
• "Comparison Literature" in New Literary History (PDF) (2009)
• "The Post-Consensus Novel: Minority Culture, Multiculturalism, and Transnational Comparison" in The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel (PDF) (2009)
• “The New Modernist Studies"
  Co-authored with Douglas Mao. PMLA 123.3, 2008
  
• “Unimaginable Largeness: Kazuo Ishiguro, Translation, and the New World Literature”
  NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 40.3, 2008
• “The Location of Literature: The Transnational Book and the Migrant Writer”
  Immigrant Fictions: Contemporary Literature in an Age of Globalization (2007)
• “Narrative Theatricality: Joseph Conrad’s Drama of the Page”
  Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage (2006)
• “Virginia Woolf’s Evasion: Critical Cosmopolitanism and British Modernism”
  Bad Modernisms (2006)
• “Introduction: Modernisms Bad and New"
  Co-authored with Douglas Mao. Bad Modernisms (2006)
• “Ian McEwan”
  Companion to the British and Irish Novel: 1945-2000 (2004)
• "Ishiguro's Floating Worlds"
  ELH (2001)
• "Shakespeare in Harlem: The Norton Anthology, Propaganda, Langston Hughes"
  MLQ (1998)

• Critical and Uncritical Reading: Introduction to Literary Theory
• Vernacular Fictions: Joyce and After
• Violence and Creativity: Introduction to the Contemporary British Novel
• What is Sophistication?

• Modernism, Translation, and the New World Literature
• The Post-War British Novel from Lamming to Sebald
• The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature

• Honorable Mention, George and Barbara Perkins Prize for most significant book in narrative studies, awarded to Cosmopolitan Style, 2008
• Elected to Advisory Board, American Comparative Literature Association, 2008
• Elected as Program Chair, Modernist Studies Association, 2008
• Vilas Associate Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006
• Phillip R. Certain Distinguished Faculty Award for most distinguished faculty member to receive tenure in the College of Letters & Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006

• American Comparative Literature Association
• Modernist Studies Association
• Narrative Society
• Modern Language Association
• Graduate Advisory Board, The Harvard Crimson

• Modernism & Globalization Seminar Series Graduate Research Group
• "Modernism & Globalization Seminar Series: A Critical Conversation Begins"
  by Rebecca L. Walkowitz (Future Traditions Magazine, Issue 2)
• "Rebecca L. Walkowitz: New Faculty Profile" by Marianne DeKoven (Future Traditions Magazine, Issue 2)