This review essay approaches Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller’s Thinking Literature across Continents (2016) from a set of questions about what it means to read in the age of hyperarchival accumulation. Written against the background of events in the United States and elsewhere during the fall of 2017, the essay tracks and assesses Ghosh and…[Read more]

This review essay approaches Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller’s Thinking Literature across Continents (2016) from a set of questions about what it means to read in the age of hyperarchival accumulation. Written against the background of events in the United States and elsewhere during the fall of 2017, the essay tracks and assesses Ghosh and…[Read more]

This review essay approaches Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller’s Thinking Literature across Continents (2016) from a set of questions about what it means to read in the age of hyperarchival accumulation. Written against the background of events in the United States and elsewhere during the fall of 2017, the essay tracks and assesses Ghosh and…[Read more]

Syllabus for ENGL 479P: BookLab, an upper-division undergraduate course at the University of Maryland. Taught with the resources and facilities of the Department of English’s BookLab, the course is a historical, imaginative, and experiential introduction to the multitudinous forms of what is not the oldest but is surely among the most enduring of…[Read more]

This essay examines the Hindi Nayī Kahānī, or New Story, Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which was influential for the short stories, criticism, and literary history that its writers produced. Incorporating a view toward the larger “metaliterary” corpus in relation to which properly “literary” nayī kahānī texts were written, the essay shows h…[Read more]

Because it is all too easy to (accidentally) make assumptions about what first-year students know about language, in 2019-2020 my lit and comp type courses will begin with a segment on language, before moving on to sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

Our exploration of language will start by jumping into a story, to help us identify the 8 parts…[Read more]

I can’t seem to forget the anecdotic episode that one of my Literature Professors used to tell the class: a deconstructionist acquaintance of theirs was so absorbed in their literal undertaking that their meals consisted only of letter-noodles soup, so that even the most mundane of tasks could intertwine itself with textuality. Farfetched as this…[Read more]

“Where do we find ourselves?” are Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Experience” first words. The query is the author’s starting point for a number of philosophical considerations; it’s also the point of departure for our making sense of pain, through the reading of both Emerson’s essay and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The essay hipothesises that Joyce’s “We walk…[Read more]

This article covers an entire generation of American popular novels published between the Civil War and World War I: campus fictions, focusing all but exclusively on homosocial scenes of undergraduate merriment. Centering on the camaraderie of fraternal sociality, campus novels model friendship as a democratic ideal for dispensing with conflict,…[Read more]

This article covers an entire generation of American popular novels published between the Civil War and World War I: campus fictions, focusing all but exclusively on homosocial scenes of undergraduate merriment. Centering on the camaraderie of fraternal sociality, campus novels model friendship as a democratic ideal for dispensing with conflict,…[Read more]

This article covers an entire generation of American popular novels published between the Civil War and World War I: campus fictions, focusing all but exclusively on homosocial scenes of undergraduate merriment. Centering on the camaraderie of fraternal sociality, campus novels model friendship as a democratic ideal for dispensing with conflict,…[Read more]

This paper examines cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief (2007) and Open City (2011). The protagonists of both novels maintain cosmopolitan identities largely by embracing an international literary culture in which elite cosmopolitan fiction relays the experiences of marginalized cosmopolitan subjects, such as the migrant w…[Read more]

Introduction to the literary theory, form, and style of Modernism, a literary movement that dominated the first half of the 20th century and continues to exert its influence over literature today, which, tellingly, is described by the label post-Modernism.

Introduction to the literary theory, form, and style of Modernism, a literary movement that dominated the first half of the 20th century and continues to exert its influence over literature today, which, tellingly, is described by the label post-Modernism.

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

Explores ‘information history’, or the study of information and its practices, as a way to arrange investigations of past and present. An invited contribution for the volume, “Information and Power in History: Towards a Global Approach,” edited by Ida Nijenhuis, Marijke van Faassen, Joris Gijsenbergh, Wim de Jong, and Ronald Sluijter (London:…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]