- Morris, Minnesota, United States
Michael Lackey
University of Minnesota, Morris, English, Department Member
- English, History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Biofiction, Antisemitism (Prejudice), and 50 moreAtheism, Religion, History of Religion, New Atheism, Holocaust Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, William Styron, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wright, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Modernism, Postmodernism, Secularization, Continental Philosophy, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Contemporary Literature, Feminist Theory, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Virginia Woolf Studies, Modernism (Literature), Zora Neale Hurston, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Biographical Novel, Contemporary Biographical Novels, Milan Kundera, Holocaust, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Transgender Studies, Georg Lukacs, Life Writing (Literature), Biography and Life-Writing, German Studies, German Literature, 20th Century American Literature, 20th Century British Literature, 20th-century German philosophy, 20th Century German Literature, Irish Studies, Irish History, Irish Literature, Irish Nationalism, Irish Politics, Irish Law, Biography, Autobiography and life writing studies, Oscar Wilde, and Mario Vargas Llosaedit
- Michael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches course... moreMichael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses about 20th- and 21st-century intellectual, political, and literary history. Over the years, Lackey has received prestigious fellowships and honors: he received Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in 2001; in 2009 he was a residential fellow at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Advanced Study; he was named Distinguished McKnight University Professor by the University of Minnesota in 2016; in the spring of 2020, he was the Martha Daniel Newell research professor at Georgia College; he was the Obama Fellow at the Obama Institute in Germany at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in May 2024; and he will be a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Hungary in the spring of 2025 (specifically, he will be the Laszlo Orszagh Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Pécs). In 2021, he was inducted into the University of Minnesota's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He is also one of the editors-in-chief of Bloomsbury Academic's Biofiction Studies series as well as an editor of the journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. He actively seeks and publishes high-quality work about biofiction.
As a graduate student, his research focused on the role atheism played in re-configuring western theories of love. At that time, he centered his work on Friedrich Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf. After finishing his PhD, he shifted his scholarly attention to atheistic critiques of religious belief. In particular, he concentrated on African American atheists, who illustrated how the God-concept was frequently used as a weapon against Blacks. While doing that book, he noticed that many prominent Black writers made a startling claim: they said that Hitler and the Nazis were Christian, and that, had they not been Christian, the Holocaust would never have occurred. It was this idea that led to his second book, which defines the specific version of Christianity that Hitler and the Nazis adopted. Since that book, he has been doing research about the rise and legitimization of the biographical novel. Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. Lackey has been trying to define the kind of "truth" that biofiction gives readers. He offers some answers to this question in his many books about biofiction, including The American Biographical Novel; Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction; and Biofiction: An Introduction.edit
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form over the last 35 years. What has not yet been scholarly acknowledged or documented is that the Irish played... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form over the last 35 years. What has not yet been scholarly acknowledged or documented is that the Irish played a crucial role in the origins, evolution, rise, and now dominance of biofiction.
Michael Lackey first examines the groundbreaking biofictions that Oscar Wilde and George Moore authored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the best biographical novels about Wilde (by Peter Ackroyd and Colm Tóibín). He then focuses on contemporary authors of biofiction (Sabina Murray, Graham Shelby, Anne Enright, and Mario Vargas Llosa, who Lackey has interviewed for this work) who use the lives of prominent Irish figures (Roger Casement and Eliza Lynch) to explore the challenges of seizing and securing a life-promoting form of agency within a colonial and patriarchal context.
In conclusion, Lackey briefly analyzes biographical novels by Peter Carey and Mary Morrissy to illustrate why agency is of central importance for the Irish, and why that focus mandated the rise of the biographical novel, a literary form that mirrors the constructed Irish interior.
Michael Lackey first examines the groundbreaking biofictions that Oscar Wilde and George Moore authored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the best biographical novels about Wilde (by Peter Ackroyd and Colm Tóibín). He then focuses on contemporary authors of biofiction (Sabina Murray, Graham Shelby, Anne Enright, and Mario Vargas Llosa, who Lackey has interviewed for this work) who use the lives of prominent Irish figures (Roger Casement and Eliza Lynch) to explore the challenges of seizing and securing a life-promoting form of agency within a colonial and patriarchal context.
In conclusion, Lackey briefly analyzes biographical novels by Peter Carey and Mary Morrissy to illustrate why agency is of central importance for the Irish, and why that focus mandated the rise of the biographical novel, a literary form that mirrors the constructed Irish interior.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish Literature, The Historical Novel, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 15 morePostmodernism, Contemporary Irish fiction, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Oscar Wilde, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Ireland, Life Writing (Literature), Historical Fiction, Literary studies, Contemporary Irish novel, Biofiction, Concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism, and Literary Theory Irish Studies
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and this is the introduction from my book, Biofiction: An Introduction. It is written primarily for undergraduate and graduate students.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, German Literature, Feminist Theory, Irish Literature, Transgender Studies, and 15 moreThe Historical Novel, Thomas Mann, African American Literature, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Modernism, Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, Postmodern Literature, Australian Literature, Zora Neale Hurston, Historical Fiction, and Biofiction
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and the study of biofiction has surged over the last ten years, so much so that Bloomsbury Academic has just launched a new series devoted exclusively... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and the study of biofiction has surged over the last ten years, so much so that Bloomsbury Academic has just launched a new series devoted exclusively to the study of the literary form. Are you are a scholar? Do you have a pathbreaking idea about biofiction? If so, there is now a press that will advance and promote your work. Feel free to contact me about potential projects.
Research Interests: Genre studies, Genre, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Postmodernism, and 14 morePostmodern Fiction, Contemporary British Literature, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Genre Theory, Literary History, History and literature, Life Writing (Literature), History of Literary Criticism, Fiction, Literary Theory and Criticism, History and theory of literary genres, Biofiction, and Autobiography and life writing studies
Olga Tokarczuk, Rosa Montero, Laurent Binet, Anchee Min, Colm Toibin, Colum McCann, Stephanus Muller, Emma Donoghue, David Ebershoff, Chika Unigwe, and Hannah Kent are just some of the global luminaries whose interviews are contained in... more
Olga Tokarczuk, Rosa Montero, Laurent Binet, Anchee Min, Colm Toibin, Colum McCann, Stephanus Muller, Emma Donoghue, David Ebershoff, Chika Unigwe, and Hannah Kent are just some of the global luminaries whose interviews are contained in this new book of conversations with contemporary biographical novelists, which Bloomsbury released on October 18th. Here is the introduction to the book, which should give you a clear sense of the interviews.
Research Interests: British Literature, Irish Studies, French Literature, Spanish Literature, Irish Literature, and 15 moreChinese Studies, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Postmodernism, Polish Literature, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Literary History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Australian Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Postmodern, and South Africa
We know that Hitler and the Nazis consistently called themselves Christian--they state this directly in their Party Program, and Hitler makes this clear in many of his speeches. But what version of Christianity did they adopt? And how... more
We know that Hitler and the Nazis consistently called themselves Christian--they state this directly in their Party Program, and Hitler makes this clear in many of his speeches. But what version of Christianity did they adopt? And how did that version enable them to justify their atrocities against the Jews? In this book, I use literature to examine various versions of Christianity that were operational in Nazi Germany. Some versions were tolerant and humane, while others, such as the one the Nazis adopted, were intolerant and inhumane. My ultimate claim is this: it is impossible to understand why the Holocaust happened without taking into account the Nazis' version of Christianity. The main writers that I discuss include Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, Mikhail Bakunin, Joseph Conrad, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, King Leopold II, Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Styron, David Mamet, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, Milan Kundera, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.
Research Interests: Christianity, Intellectual History, Queer Studies, Aesthetics, Political Philosophy, and 61 moreAtheism, Modernism (Literature), Political Theory, History of Christianity, Human Rights, Queer Theory, The Historical Novel, Natural Law, Modernist poetry, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Language and Ideology, Ideology, Fascism, Social Justice, Continental Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Louis Althusser, Martin Heidegger, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), T.S. Eliot, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Mark Twain, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary Literature, Immanuel Kant, Modernism, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Mikhail Bakunin, Political Ideology, William Faulkner, Belgian History, Postmodern Literature, Poland, Milan Kundera, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Martin Luther, Nazi Germany, Joseph Conrad, Alice Walker, Nazism, Richard Wright, New Atheism, Freedom, David Mamet, Nazi Propaganda, Historical Novel, E.M. Forster, Belgian Congo, Joseph Goebbels, History of Christian Thought, William Styron, Heart of Darkness, Nazis, History of Philosophy, Subconscious, Louise Erdrich, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Modernism and Posmodernism in Post World War Two North America, and Subconscious Mind
In recent years, the biographical novel has supplanted the classical historical novel and become a dominant literary form. But why? And what exactly is the biographical novel? How does it picture history differently from the classical... more
In recent years, the biographical novel has supplanted the classical historical novel and become a dominant literary form. But why? And what exactly is the biographical novel? How does it picture history differently from the classical historical novel? How does it uniquely engage and critique the political? In this book, I answer these and many other questions. This is the first chapter from the book. In the other chapters, I examine biographical novels about figures such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Moses, Herod, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner, Sally Hemings, Alfred Rosenberg, and Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, German Studies, Aesthetics, German History, The Historical Novel, and 33 moreLiterary Criticism, Surrealism, Language and Ideology, Ideology, Continental Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Human Universals, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Holocaust Studies, 20th Century German History, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Immanuel Kant, Modernism, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Universals, Political Ideology, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Biographical Novel, Language Universals, Biofiction, Problem of Universals, Nat Turner, William Styron, Sally Hemings, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
The biographical novel has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why? I interviewed prominent biographical novelists such as Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Julia Alvarez, Russell Banks, and Anita Diamant to get... more
The biographical novel has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why? I interviewed prominent biographical novelists such as Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Julia Alvarez, Russell Banks, and Anita Diamant to get some answers. I have attached my introduction to the book, and the book contains my interviews with the authors. I am currently working on a new book of interviews with biographical novelists from across the globe. Bloomsbury will publish that book in late 2018, and it includes interviews with Colm Toibin, Emma Donoghue, Colum McCann, David Ebershoff, Chika Unigwe, Sabina Murray, Rosa Montero, David Lodge, Susan Sellers, Laurent Binet, and many others.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, American Literature, History, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, and 41 moreAesthetics, Jewish Studies, Feminist Theory, Literature, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Feminist Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality, Social Justice, Jewish History, Gender Equality, Literary Theory, Biography, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Feminism, Jewish - Christian Relations, Holocaust Studies, Midrash, Biographical Methods, Aesthetics and Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Jewish Thought, Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Literature, Michael Cunningham, Judaism, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Feminism and Social Justice, Women and Gender Studies, Biography and Life-Writing, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Joyce Carol Oates, Biofiction, Anita Diamant, Julia Alvarez, Biographical Fiction, and Marilyn Monroe
In this book, I argue that black atheists reject belief in God more for political than epistemological reasons. The God-concept was frequently used as an ideological instrument for subjugating and violating blacks. Therefore, to make a... more
In this book, I argue that black atheists reject belief in God more for political than epistemological reasons. The God-concept was frequently used as an ideological instrument for subjugating and violating blacks. Therefore, to make a more just polity possible, atheism is a political must. Included here is the introduction to the book.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Political Philosophy, Atheism, Feminist Theory, and 27 moreRace and Racism, Cultural Theory, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Social Justice, Continental Philosophy, African American Literature, Martin Heidegger, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Feminism, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, African American History, African American Studies, History of Atheism, Richard Rorty, Jean Paul Sartre, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Frantz Fanon, Zora Neale Hurston, Feminism and Social Justice, Langston Hughes, Racial Justice, Richard Wright, Nella Larsen, Jaques Derrida, and Lorraine Hansberry
God died in 1882, somewhere in Germany. But if God was the basis and foundation for our understanding of love, what happens to love after the death of God? In my dissertation, I answer this question through my analysis of the writings of... more
God died in 1882, somewhere in Germany. But if God was the basis and foundation for our understanding of love, what happens to love after the death of God? In my dissertation, I answer this question through my analysis of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf. Parts of the dissertation were published in essays for Philosophy and Literature, Journal of the History of Ideas, Studies in Short Fiction, Woolf Studies Annual, and Journal of Modern Literature.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Modernism (Literature), Jean-Luc Nancy, Literary Theory, Gilles Deleuze, and 27 moreFriedrich Nietzsche, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, History of Atheism, Richard Rorty, Modernism, Free Will, Marcel Proust, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Arthur Schopenhauer, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Jean-François Lyotard, Theories of Love, Postmodern, New Atheism, Freedom, Atheism/Secular Studies, and Modern Atheism
Bloomsbury has published the first anthology of biofiction. What is the nature of biofiction? How is it different from biography and historical fiction? How is it similar? What kind of "truth" does biofiction picture? How does it... more
Bloomsbury has published the first anthology of biofiction. What is the nature of biofiction? How is it different from biography and historical fiction? How is it similar? What kind of "truth" does biofiction picture? How does it access and represent history and give us new ways of thinking about history? Hoe does it engage the political? This reader, which consists of a wide range of writings, answers these and many other questions.
Research Interests: American Literature, British Literature, Irish Studies, Modernism (Literature), Irish Literature, and 32 moreTransgender Studies, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Postmodernism, Irish History, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Contemporary British Literature, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, British and Irish History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Transgender, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Frida Kahlo, Henry James, Historical Fiction, Postmodern, Contemporary British Fiction, Biofiction, Irish Nationalism, William Styron, Marilyn Monroe, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
What is the best way to bring about racial healing and racial justice in the United States? This was a central question in the 1960s. Black separatists thought that the best approach was to establish separate but truly equal... more
What is the best way to bring about racial healing and racial justice in the United States? This was a central question in the 1960s. Black separatists thought that the best approach was to establish separate but truly equal institutions. But black integrationists held that separatism leads necessarily to racial discrimination and has horribly negative consequences for blacks. While doing research about the black intellectual J. Saunders Redding, I discovered a manuscript, which is a transcription of a 1969 meeting with famous black integrationist writers, including Redding, Ralph Ellison, John Hope Franklin, Adelaide Cromwell Hill, St. Clair Drake, Phyllis Wallace, Kenneth Clark, and many other luminaries. The group discussed various forms of racism in the United States, brainstormed strategies for overcoming systemic racism, and devised a plan to counter the black separatist approach to racial justice. Strangely, this conversation is painfully relevant today, as we are still struggling in this country to come to terms with our racial history and situation. Here is my introduction, which provides a history of the group and the manuscript.
Research Interests: American History, Intellectual History, Cultural History, Sociology, Cultural Studies, and 28 moreBlack Studies Or African American Studies, Political Philosophy, Education, Race and Racism, Educational Inequalities (class; race; gender etc), Cultural Theory, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Social Justice, Discrimination, Civil Rights, Ralph Ellison, Postmodernism, Social Justice in Education, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, Philosophy Of Race, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Intellectual and cultural history, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Civil Rights (History), Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, History of Race and Ethnicity, Black Power Movement, Freedom, Integration, Black Power Studies, and Social Justice Issues In Adult and Higher Education
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. There are in this book process pieces from prominent biographical novelists about the nature of their work as well as academic essays that define the... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. There are in this book process pieces from prominent biographical novelists about the nature of their work as well as academic essays that define the nature of this aesthetic form. This volume brings some clarity and depth to our understanding of bioficiton. Here is a link to the book: https://www.routledge.com/Biofictional-Histories-Mutations-and-Forms/Lackey/p/book/9781138220393
Research Interests: American Literature, German Studies, American Studies, German Literature, Victorian Studies, and 17 moreNineteenth Century Studies, Surrealism, Victorian Literature, Friedrich Nietzsche, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernist Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Frida Kahlo, Nazi Germany, John F. Kennedy, Biofiction, and JFK Historiography
The biographical novel has become a dominant literary form in recent years. J.M. Coetzee, Michael Cunningham, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, and Colum McCann are just a few who have written spectacular ones. But Jay... more
The biographical novel has become a dominant literary form in recent years. J.M. Coetzee, Michael Cunningham, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, and Colum McCann are just a few who have written spectacular ones. But Jay Parini authored his first biographical novel in 1990, years before these other writers. In fact, if we want to understand the rise and legitimization of the biographical novel, one needs to talk about Parini, who has authored important biographical novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, and Herman Melville. I collected and edited Parini's interviews so that we could get some insight into his motivation for writing such works. Here is my introduction to the book, which should give you some insight into Parini's career as well as his contribution to the rise of the biographical novel. Those interested in biographical fiction should see my book Truthful Fictions, which contains my interviews with prominent American biographical novelists, including Parini.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Literature, and 16 moreThe Novel, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, Continental Philosophy, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, and Biofiction
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a real person, and while it is clearly fiction, many scholars have treated the literary form as if it were biography. The Moroccan writer, Hassan Najmi, has authored a splendid... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a real person, and while it is clearly fiction, many scholars have treated the literary form as if it were biography. The Moroccan writer, Hassan Najmi, has authored a splendid biographical novel about Gertrude Stein, which clarifies why the literary form is primarily fiction and should not be treated as a form of biography or history.
Research Interests: Modernism (Literature), Moroccan Studies, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Gertrude Stein, and 14 moreLiterary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Modernism (Art History), Modernism, Literary History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Pablo Picasso, Moroccan Literature, Biographical Novel, Anais Nin, Biofiction, and Henri Matisse
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonists after actual historical figures; it has become a dominant literary form over the last thirty-five years, resulting in spectacular works from global luminaries as varied as Gabriel... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonists after actual historical
figures; it has become a dominant literary form over the last thirty-five
years, resulting in spectacular works from global luminaries as varied as
Gabriel García Márquez, J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol
Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peter Carey, Olga Tokarczuk, and Hilary Mantel, just to mention a notable few. Studies about biofiction have surged over the last ten years, but what scholars have not yet noted is the African American contribution to the evolution, rise, and legitimization of biofiction. This special issue of African American Review is devoted to African American biofiction, but it is important to clarify what is meant here. Biofictions that are written by African Americans but also about African Americans would qualify as African American biofiction, so, even though Colum McCann is a prominent Irish American writer, his novel TransAtlantic would qualify as an African American biofiction because Frederick Douglass is one of the protagonists.
figures; it has become a dominant literary form over the last thirty-five
years, resulting in spectacular works from global luminaries as varied as
Gabriel García Márquez, J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol
Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peter Carey, Olga Tokarczuk, and Hilary Mantel, just to mention a notable few. Studies about biofiction have surged over the last ten years, but what scholars have not yet noted is the African American contribution to the evolution, rise, and legitimization of biofiction. This special issue of African American Review is devoted to African American biofiction, but it is important to clarify what is meant here. Biofictions that are written by African Americans but also about African Americans would qualify as African American biofiction, so, even though Colum McCann is a prominent Irish American writer, his novel TransAtlantic would qualify as an African American biofiction because Frederick Douglass is one of the protagonists.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Literary Criticism, African American Literature, Literary Theory, Twentieth Century Literature, and 12 morePostmodernism, African American Culture, African American History, African American Studies, Oscar Wilde, Postmodern Literature, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Literary studies, African-American Political Thought, Biofiction, and Claudia Rankine
Frederick the Great is one of the most important biographical novels of the twentieth century, which is strange, since it does not technically exist. In 1905, Mann started work on a biographical novel about the Prussian monarch, and... more
Frederick the Great is one of the most important biographical novels of the twentieth century, which is strange, since it does not technically exist. In 1905, Mann started work on a biographical novel about the Prussian monarch, and though he never completed it, his character Gustav Aschenbach from "Death in Venice" did. Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and while there were a few important biographical novels in the nineteenth century, the literary form had its first major surge in the 1920s and 1930s, with publications mainly from many prominent German writers. Mann, I contend, is of crucial importance in biofiction studies because through his writings about Frederick he provides us with a compelling framework for understanding how authors fictionalize a life in order to support the formation of a particular type of polity. (ML) I cannot include the whole article for one year, so I have only included the introduction here. Here is the link to the essay: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/19/article/923133
Research Interests: German Studies, German Literature, Thomas Mann, Literary Criticism, Literary Symbolism, and 12 more20th Century German Literature, Literary Theory, Schopenhauer, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, World War I, First World War, German Literature and Culture, Arthur Schopenhauer, Historical Fiction, Biofiction, and Thomas Mann Death in Venice
This chapter explores biofiction as a response to Barthes’s Death of the Author theory by focusing on a set of biofictions that recast authors from the past as characters. We argue that, in reaction to postmodernism’s ontological... more
This chapter explores biofiction as a response to Barthes’s Death of the Author theory by focusing on a set of biofictions that recast authors from the past as characters. We argue that, in reaction to postmodernism’s ontological destabilization and pervasive irony, biofictions seek a re-grounding in the values that past writers are still able to reveal to us today. We open our illustration of this point with an interpretation of two of Woody Allen’s films, which expose the hollowness of disregarding an
author’s own take on their works and emphasize the continued relevance of lessons learned from great modernists. Moving on to our literary examples, we use testimonies by authors as well as textual examples from Maggie Gee and Colm Tóibín to highlight biofiction’s polemic take on the Death of the Author and develop a theory of “double anchoring”, meaning that writer-inspired biofictions have a two-tiered approach to the literary tradition, integrating both factual details about the authors they portray and intertextual elements from these authors’ works. Our main case studies, analyzed in the subsequent sections, can be divided into biofictions that work inside the postmodern paradigm, revealing its limits and challenging it from within, such as Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), and biofictions that break away from the perpetual instability of truth models, proposing new ways of constructing authors by not just acknowledging the inaccessibility of the past in an ever-repeated deconstructive gesture, but by also proposing alternative views of the past which can offer more than factual narratives do, as we show with the examples of Tóibín’s The Master (2004) and Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2000). We conclude that, while many authors of biofiction are aware of contemporary theory’s erasure of the author, they not only reject the idea that it is a total erasure but have also resurrected a version of the writer that is an amalgamation of fact and fiction.
author’s own take on their works and emphasize the continued relevance of lessons learned from great modernists. Moving on to our literary examples, we use testimonies by authors as well as textual examples from Maggie Gee and Colm Tóibín to highlight biofiction’s polemic take on the Death of the Author and develop a theory of “double anchoring”, meaning that writer-inspired biofictions have a two-tiered approach to the literary tradition, integrating both factual details about the authors they portray and intertextual elements from these authors’ works. Our main case studies, analyzed in the subsequent sections, can be divided into biofictions that work inside the postmodern paradigm, revealing its limits and challenging it from within, such as Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), and biofictions that break away from the perpetual instability of truth models, proposing new ways of constructing authors by not just acknowledging the inaccessibility of the past in an ever-repeated deconstructive gesture, but by also proposing alternative views of the past which can offer more than factual narratives do, as we show with the examples of Tóibín’s The Master (2004) and Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2000). We conclude that, while many authors of biofiction are aware of contemporary theory’s erasure of the author, they not only reject the idea that it is a total erasure but have also resurrected a version of the writer that is an amalgamation of fact and fiction.
Research Interests:
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual person, and as a literary form, it has come to prominence over the last 35 years. The Germans played a crucial role in the origins and evolution of the genre, and to... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual person, and as a literary form, it has come to prominence over the last 35 years. The Germans played a crucial role in the origins and evolution of the genre, and to indicate the importance of German biofiction, the journal, a/b: Auto/ Biography Studies, has published a special issue devoted to the study of the literary form. The introduction is free of charge, and it is titled "German Biofiction from Nietzsche to the Present." If you would like to see it, here is a link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989575.2023.2190221?src=
Research Interests: German Studies, German Literature, Jewish Studies, Feminist Theory, Thomas Mann, and 14 moreLiterary Criticism, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Social Justice, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism, Feminism, Nietzsche, Literary History, Postmodern Literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Feminism and Social Justice, Homosexuality, and Biofiction
What would Nietzsche look like in a novel? Scholars generally agree that Lawrence's novel Women in Love is dominated by Nietzschean ideas, and most agree that the character of Birkin is based on Nietzsche and Lawrence. Most important in... more
What would Nietzsche look like in a novel? Scholars generally agree that Lawrence's novel Women in Love is dominated by Nietzschean ideas, and most agree that the character of Birkin is based on Nietzsche and Lawrence. Most important in this essay is Nietzsche's view of the will to power. For most scholars, to be Nietzschean, a person must internalize Nietzsche's will to power philosophy and then interpret and engage the world through that philosophy--this is, as I show, Heidegger's approach to Nietzsche. I argue that this is incorrect, because Nietzsche states explicitly that the will to power is not an ontological reality but rather his own invention. According to my approach, to be Nietzschean, a person must reject Nietzsche and his will to power and construct one's own system of living. This is what the character of Birkin does with Nietzsche and his will to power, which he mentions directly. This paradox at the core of Nietzsche's writing exposes those authoritarian interpretations of Nietzsche as incoherent nonsense. Lawrence was a great reader of Nietzsche.
Research Interests: Psychology, Philosophy, Ontology, Philosophy Of Language, Aesthetics, and 17 morePosthumanism, Ideology, Continental Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Aesthetics and Ethics, History Of Psychology, Modernism, Free Will, Arthur Schopenhauer, Post-modernism, Freedom, D.H.Lawrence, and Concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism
Prominent writers have faulted Styron for making the protagonist of his novel Sophie's Choice a Christian. Their argument goes like this: the Nazis targeted Jews. Therefore, Styron implicitly de-Judifies the Holocaust by making a... more
Prominent writers have faulted Styron for making the protagonist of his novel Sophie's Choice a Christian. Their argument goes like this: the Nazis targeted Jews. Therefore, Styron implicitly de-Judifies the Holocaust by making a Christian the primary victim in the novel. I argue that this argument only makes sense if we see Sophie exclusively as a victim. However, if we understand that Sophie is not a Christian victim but a Christian anti-Semite (perpetrator), and that it was her version of Christian anti-Semitism that in part made Hitler and the Nazis possible, then the critiques of Styron's novel would make no sense. The idea in this essay is more fully developed in the final chapter of my book The Modernist God State. That chapter is titled: "William Styron's Sophie's Choice: Locating the Christian Theology of the Nazis' Genocidal Anti-Semitism."
Research Interests: American Literature, Christianity, Cultural Studies, Atheism, History of Ideas, and 23 moreHistory of Christianity, The Novel, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Antisemitism (Prejudice), German Idealism, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Twentieth Century Literature, Holocaust Studies, Contemporary American Literature, Immanuel Kant, Antisemitism/Racisms, History of the Novel, Poland, Holocaust Literature, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Antisemitism, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, history of Poland, and William Styron
Scholars have suggested that William Styron’s Nathan in Sophie’s Choice is insane or depraved — a character whose motivations lack rationality at best and are unambiguously evil at worst. Elie Wiesel, the author of the famous Holocaust... more
Scholars have suggested that William Styron’s Nathan in Sophie’s Choice is insane or depraved — a character whose motivations lack rationality at best and are unambiguously evil at worst. Elie Wiesel, the author of the famous Holocaust memoir Night, has been very critical of Styron’s novel. Ironically, by using the Yiddish version of Wiesel’s memoir Night, it is possible to demonstrate that Nathan’s behavior is more “logical” than scholars have previously understood. This approach offers us a new way of reading and interpreting Styron’s novel by clarifying how Nathan’s character functions within a well-established tradition of sociopolitical outrage about racial oppression, which is best exemplified in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, a text that Styron strategically references in Sophie’s Choice.
Research Interests: American Literature, Twentieth Century Literature, Holocaust Studies, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, and 21 moreTwentieth Century Germany, National Socialism, Rape Culture, Holocaust Literature, James Baldwin, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Rape as a Weapon of War, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Adolf Hitler, Nazi Propaganda, The Holocaust, Holocaust Shoah, Concentration Camps, Nat Turner, William Styron, Holocaust History and Historiography, Irma Grese, Elie Wiesel, and Jewish Responses to the Holocaust
Sophie becomes an atheist. But when? Scholars have suggested that she loses her faith after she is forced to send one of her children to her death. But there is evidence that Sophie continues to believe even after she makes that... more
Sophie becomes an atheist. But when? Scholars have suggested that she loses her faith after she is forced to send one of her children to her death. But there is evidence that Sophie continues to believe even after she makes that decision. In this essay, I show how Sophie loses her faith when she discovers that Hitler and the Nazis committed their atrocities against Jews on the basis of their version of Christianity. She makes this discovery when talking to a young Nazi child. To illuminate this scene, I analyze it in relation to Nazi books made especially for children. My ultimate argument is this: Sophie becomes an atheist because she realizes that a version of Christianity made Hitler and the Nazis possible. For a more detailed analysis of my approach to Styron's novel, see my book The modernist God State.
Research Interests: American Literature, Christianity, American Studies, Atheism, Literature, and 16 moreHistory of Christianity, Literary Criticism, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Jewish - Christian Relations, Holocaust Studies, Contemporary Literature, Antisemitism/Racisms, Modernism, Nazi Germany, Antisemitism, Nazism, New Atheism, Nazism and Religion, and William Styron
Most educated Christians modify belief in relation to advances and discoveries in science. Given discoveries about the brutality of nature, which Darwin discusses in his letters with Asa Grey, it was difficult to believe that God was... more
Most educated Christians modify belief in relation to advances and discoveries in science. Given discoveries about the brutality of nature, which Darwin discusses in his letters with Asa Grey, it was difficult to believe that God was omnipresent. In this paper about “God’s Grandeur,” I argue that Hopkins was aware of arguments about the brutality of nature, which forced him to reconsider the degree to which God was present in nature. Hopkins continues to believe, but he now holds that God only appears in momentary flashes. Other than those moments, God is not seen or experienced.
Research Interests: Christianity, Atheism, New Testament, History of Christianity, Biblical Studies, and 13 moreScience and Religion, Biblical Theology, New Testament and Christian Origins, Victorian poetry, Darwinism, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Bible, Darwin, Literary Darwinism Or Evolutionary Literary Theory, New Testament Textual Criticism, Charles Darwin, New Testament Studies, and Stephen Jay Gould
In writing Heart of Darkness, Conrad made a crucial discovery. Morality does not prevent genocide. Quite the contrary, genocide occurs because of moral discourses. It was for this reason that Conrad rejected morality. To put the... more
In writing Heart of Darkness, Conrad made a crucial discovery. Morality does not prevent genocide. Quite the contrary, genocide occurs because of moral discourses. It was for this reason that Conrad rejected morality. To put the matter simply, Conrad rejects morality because he is committed to social justice. For a more detailed analysis of Conrad's view of the political psychology that makes genocide possible, see chapter five of my book The Modernist God State, which is titled: "Joseph Conrad and Michael Bakunin on the Redemptive Logic of Western Genocide."
Research Interests: English Literature, Moral Psychology, The Novel, Postcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, and 24 moreGenocide Studies, Evolution of Morality, Modernist fiction, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Post-Colonialism, Morality (Social Psychology), Moral Development, Comparative genocide, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Literature, Modernism, Moral Philosophy, Novel, Modernist Literature, Moral and Political Philosophy, Modernist Studies, Joseph Conrad, Genocide, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Chinua Achebe, Leopold II (King of Belgians), and Colonial Genocide
Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, and Joseph Conrad all came to the same conclusion at roughly the same time: that a discourse of morality, rather than promoting the social good, actually sets the stage for human rights abuses. In this... more
Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, and Joseph Conrad all came to the same conclusion at roughly the same time: that a discourse of morality, rather than promoting the social good, actually sets the stage for human rights abuses. In this essay, I show how Twain replaces morality with a discourse of intimacy in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Research Interests: American Literature, American Studies, Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Nineteenth Century Studies, and 8 moreLiterary Criticism, Evolution of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, Moral Philosophy, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, and Huckleberry Finn
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form since the 1990s. Why? I offer some explanations in this essay, and I clarify how and why the Irish in... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form since the 1990s. Why? I offer some explanations in this essay, and I clarify how and why the Irish in particular played a crucial role in the origins, evolution, and rise of biofiction.
Research Interests: Christianity, Irish Studies, Aesthetics, Irish Literature, History of Christianity, and 15 moreThe Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Postmodernism, Irish History, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary Literature, Oscar Wilde, British and Irish History, Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Ireland, Nazism, Georg Lukács, and Biofiction
How can we explain the origins of biofiction? Scholars suggest that the history-of-science contributed significantly to the rise of the historical novel, which exposes the way historical forces shape and determine the human. Many scholars... more
How can we explain the origins of biofiction? Scholars suggest that the history-of-science contributed significantly to the rise of the historical novel, which exposes the way historical forces shape and determine the human. Many scholars treat the biographical novel as a form of the historical novel. But by looking at some authors of biofiction who opposed the determinism and even fatalism implicit in the history-as-science approach and its concomitant aesthetic form, the historical novel, I show how biofiction came into being as an aesthetic reaction against the historical novel. Instead of picturing the historical forces that shape and determine the human, the biographical novel gives readers a model of a figure that defies or evades environmental conditioning or cultural determinism by shaping and determining the world around him or her. In this essay, I focus on Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry James, and Colm Toibin.
Research Interests: History, Irish Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, The Historical Novel, Gay And Lesbian Studies, and 15 moreLiterary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism, Contemporary Literature, Literary History, Oscar Wilde, Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Henry James, Anarchism & Postmodern Theory, Historical Fiction, Georg Lukács, Biofiction, and Concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism
This is my Afterword to the collection of essays Authorizing Early Modern European Women: From Biography to Biofiction. This volume contains many first-rate essays about biofiction, and it adds considerably to both scholarship about... more
This is my Afterword to the collection of essays Authorizing Early Modern European Women: From Biography to Biofiction. This volume contains many first-rate essays about biofiction, and it adds considerably to both scholarship about biofiction as well as early modern women. This book should be in every university library, and if you are a scholar of either biofiction or early modern women, I strongly recommend that you have a copy in your personal library.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Early Modern History, Literary Criticism, Early Modern Europe, Literary Theory, and 14 moreFeminism, Early Modern Literature, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Early Modern Intellectual History, Early Modern Women Writers, Literary History, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Life Writing (Literature), Life Writing, Biography and Life-Writing, Biofiction, Autobiography and life writing studies, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
In 2012, Monica Latham published a groundbreaking essay about Virginia Woolf biofictions, which had a significant impact on biofiction studies. Since then, Latham has become one of the most prominent scholars of biofiction in the world,... more
In 2012, Monica Latham published a groundbreaking essay about Virginia Woolf biofictions, which had a significant impact on biofiction studies. Since then, Latham has become one of the most prominent scholars of biofiction in the world, and she is currently the leading scholar of biofictions about Virginia Woolf. This is my Foreword to her wonderful book Virginia Woolf's Afterlives: The Author as Character in Contemporary Fiction and Drama. I explain why Latham's book is such a masterful achievement and a remarkable contribution to both biofiction and Virginia Woolf scholarship. This book should be in every university library and in the personal libraries of scholars of Virginia Woolf and biofiction.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Modernism (Literature), Literary Criticism, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Literary Theory, and 9 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, Feminism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Gay and Lesbian History, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, and Virginia Woolf Studies
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a historical figure, and since the 1990s it has become one of the most dominant literary forms. This is surprising because many prominent scholars, critics, and writers have... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a historical figure, and since the 1990s it has become one of the most dominant literary forms. This is surprising because many prominent scholars, critics, and writers have criticized and even condemned it. This essay hypothesizes that postmodern theories of truth and concomitant transformations in reader sensibilities partly account for the legitimization and now dominance of biofiction. The essay analyzes a 1968 literary debate among Ralph Ellison, William Styron, and Robert Penn Warren, which on the surface concerned the uses of history in literature. But because it happened just one year after the publication of Styron’s controversial novel about Nat Turner, the debate ended up focusing primarily on the nature and value of biofiction. By analyzing the discussion in relation to contemporary formulations about and theorizations of biofiction, this essay illustrates why the forum represents a turning point in literary history, resulting in the decline of a traditional type of literary symbol and the rise of a more anchored and empirical symbol—that is, the type of symbol found in biofiction.
Research Interests: Aesthetics, Race and Racism, The Historical Novel, Deconstruction, Critical Race Theory, and 14 moreRace and Ethnicity, Ralph Ellison, Agency Theory, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Autonomy, Postmodern Fiction, Aesthetics and Politics, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Literary History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, History of Literary Criticism, and Biofiction
What enabled so many everyday Germans to kill Jews with emotional and psychological impunity? Hannah Arendt suggests that a failure in thinking can account for this behavior. But I argue that Bernhard Schlink exposes Arendt's theory as... more
What enabled so many everyday Germans to kill Jews with emotional and psychological impunity? Hannah Arendt suggests that a failure in thinking can account for this behavior. But I argue that Bernhard Schlink exposes Arendt's theory as limited and flawed in his novel The Reader. To prevent everyday people from committing atrocities, what is needed is an ability to read-to others, an ability to access the interior of the other. This theory of reading-to sheds new and very different light on Schlink's novel.
Research Interests: German Studies, German Literature, Genocide Studies, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Literary Theory, and 15 moreTwentieth Century Literature, Holocaust Studies, Contemporary Literature, Twentieth Century Germany, Literature and Philosophy, Philosophy and Literature, Hannah Arendt, 20th-century German philosophy, Primo Levi, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Antisemitism, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Woody Allen
The journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies just published this article, and it is free to access. Here is the link to the essay. Below is the first paragraph from the essay.... more
The journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies just published this article, and it is free to access. Here is the link to the essay. Below is the first paragraph from the essay.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IWIKKX2A6EFPE7WJI5CS/full?target=10.1080/08989575.2020.1786980
Friedrich Nietzsche's famous claim that truth is a conceptual illusion that language-users have forgotten to see as provisional and evolving was one of the main ideas informing the major postmodern writings of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, Sarah Kofman, and others from the 1960s and 1970s. The linguistic turn--with its emphasis on the necessary deceptions implicit in language, the relentless exposure of binary oppositions as reductive, the searing critique of naïve realism, and the perpetual uncovering of centralized but unquestioned power layered into discourse--had a staggering impact on the study of genres. If Georg Lukacs could so confidently (even dogmatically) define the historical novel in 1937, this was because he felt that there was a certain kind of epistemic justification for making objective distinctions between literary forms. Nietzsche's work posed a major challenge to the foundation of Lukacs' scholarly project, which, in part, explains why the Hungarian Marxist waged intellectual war against the Ubermensch philologist until the end of his career. By the mid to late 1960s, with the academic legitimization of postmodernism and the rise of deconstruction, Lukacs and his work were effectively sidelined, even if some prominent scholars continued to take his side and deploy his methods. The academic result was that the scholarly practices of exposing genre distinctions as arbitrary, emphasizing overlap between literary forms, and foregrounding the porous borders of linguistic constructions came to dominate, thus rendering neat and tidy definitions of discrete genres as naïve and untenable. So, deconstructing generic distinctions became the craze, and it has dominated the academic study of literature for the last forty to fifty years. But there is growing evidence that scholars are starting to tire of the postmodern models of perpetual blurring. Moreover, there is a yearning for more stable but informed descriptions of literary forms. This is the core idea underwriting the essays in this issue.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IWIKKX2A6EFPE7WJI5CS/full?target=10.1080/08989575.2020.1786980
Friedrich Nietzsche's famous claim that truth is a conceptual illusion that language-users have forgotten to see as provisional and evolving was one of the main ideas informing the major postmodern writings of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, Sarah Kofman, and others from the 1960s and 1970s. The linguistic turn--with its emphasis on the necessary deceptions implicit in language, the relentless exposure of binary oppositions as reductive, the searing critique of naïve realism, and the perpetual uncovering of centralized but unquestioned power layered into discourse--had a staggering impact on the study of genres. If Georg Lukacs could so confidently (even dogmatically) define the historical novel in 1937, this was because he felt that there was a certain kind of epistemic justification for making objective distinctions between literary forms. Nietzsche's work posed a major challenge to the foundation of Lukacs' scholarly project, which, in part, explains why the Hungarian Marxist waged intellectual war against the Ubermensch philologist until the end of his career. By the mid to late 1960s, with the academic legitimization of postmodernism and the rise of deconstruction, Lukacs and his work were effectively sidelined, even if some prominent scholars continued to take his side and deploy his methods. The academic result was that the scholarly practices of exposing genre distinctions as arbitrary, emphasizing overlap between literary forms, and foregrounding the porous borders of linguistic constructions came to dominate, thus rendering neat and tidy definitions of discrete genres as naïve and untenable. So, deconstructing generic distinctions became the craze, and it has dominated the academic study of literature for the last forty to fifty years. But there is growing evidence that scholars are starting to tire of the postmodern models of perpetual blurring. Moreover, there is a yearning for more stable but informed descriptions of literary forms. This is the core idea underwriting the essays in this issue.
Research Interests: African Studies, Literary Criticism, Continental Philosophy, African American Literature, Truth, and 15 moreLiterary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Nietzsche, African American Studies, Literature and Philosophy, Theories Of Truth, Philosophy and Literature, Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, History of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory and Criticism, and Biofiction
In the June 1999 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Jonathan Dee published a scathing article about biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. He specifically faults Joanna Scott, claiming that she is in... more
In the June 1999 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Jonathan Dee published a scathing article about biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. He specifically faults Joanna Scott, claiming that she is in part responsible for the then-contemporary surge in biofiction. There has been a deep-level prejudice against biofiction since the 1930s, and Dee’s article is useful because he has internalized many of the misconceptions about the literary form. Dee’s decision to target Scott in particular is instructive, as her career spans the massive surge in biofiction from the late 1980s until the present and she, without ever mentioning him, effectively refutes all of Dee’s faulty assumptions in her essays and interviews about the literary form. By looking closely at Scott’s career and reading her work alongside many biographical novelists, I offer a more grounded way of thinking about the way the literary form functions and signifies.
Research Interests: Aesthetics, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 10 moreTwentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Modernism, Literary History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Georg Lukács, Egon Schiele, Biographical Novel, and Biofiction
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. But authors of biofiction frequently take liberties with established facts. Is this confusing for children and young adults who read biofiction? What... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. But authors of biofiction frequently take liberties with established facts. Is this confusing for children and young adults who read biofiction? What kind of truth are authors of biofiction giving young adults and children? To answer these questions, I had my youngest daughter read two biographical novels by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris, and then she and I interviewed the authors. This article is an edited transcription of that interview, and it also contains my reflections about the nature of the experience. The interview sheds light not only on biofiction for children but also biofiction more generally.
Research Interests: Scottish Literature, English Literature, Children's Literature, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, and 14 moreChildren's and Young Adult Literature, English History, Scottish History, Literary Theory, Biography, Virginia Woolf, Children's Media, Contemporary Literature, Literary History, History and literature, Life Writing (Literature), History of Literary Criticism, Biography and Life-Writing, and Biofiction
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein influence the writings and thought of Virginia Woolf? Scholars have wondered. In this short article, I offer a way to think about the Wittgenstein/Woolf connection.
Research Interests:
In the college classroom, biofiction has a powerful impact on students, oftentimes motivating them to go above and beyond the assignment. Given its uncanny power, I wondered if students could make significant contributions to biofiction... more
In the college classroom, biofiction has a powerful impact on students, oftentimes motivating them to go above and beyond the assignment. Given its uncanny power, I wondered if students could make significant contributions to biofiction studies by interviewing authors of specific novels. As I discovered, the answer is yes. In this introduction, I describe how I came upon the idea of mentoring undergraduates in the art of interviewing authors of biofiction, and clarify how I prepared students to conduct public interviews of authors at both the University of Minnesota Morris and Georgia College. Included in this special issue are three interviews my students conducted with Joanna Scott, David Ebershoff, and Lance Olsen. My introduction to the special issue is available for free online. Here is a link to the essay: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989575.2021.1886450
Research Interests: Transgender Studies, Queer Theory, Critical Pedagogy, Gay And Lesbian Studies, African American Literature, and 13 moreLiterary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Pedagogy, Theories of Gender and Transgender, In-depth Interviews, African American Studies, Literature And Language Teaching, Interviewing, Interviews, Biofiction, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Virginia Woolf contributed significantly to the rise, legitimization, and now dominance of contemporary biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. And yet, Woolf could not imagine her way to... more
Virginia Woolf contributed significantly to the rise, legitimization, and now dominance of contemporary biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. And yet, Woolf could not imagine her way to biofiction. Why? I answer this question in this very short essay. Also, I clarify how Woolf functions in contemporary biofiction.
Research Interests: British Literature, Aesthetics, Feminist Theory, The Historical Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 15 moreVirginia Woolf, Postmodernism, Feminism, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, 20th Century British Literature, Feminism and Social Justice, Bloomsbury Group, Postmodern, and Virginia Woolf Studies
What role, if any, did Virginia Woolf play in the rise of what would become contemporary biofiction? How does Woolf function as a character in contemporary biographical novels? And how do all of the wonderful biographical novels about... more
What role, if any, did Virginia Woolf play in the rise of what would become contemporary biofiction? How does Woolf function as a character in contemporary biographical novels? And how do all of the wonderful biographical novels about Woolf help us to better understand biofiction more generally? These are the kinds of questions that contemporary Woolf and biofiction scholars address in the most recent issue of The Virginia Woolf Miscellany, which Todd Avery and I co-edited. Here is the introduction, which should give you a clear sense of the essays and poem contained in this special issue about Woolf and biofiction..
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, and 15 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Feminism, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Bloomsbury Group, Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, and Virginia Woolf Studies
Special Issue about Virginia Woolf and Biofiction Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. With regard to the origins, evolution,... more
Special Issue about Virginia Woolf and Biofiction
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. With regard to the origins, evolution, and now dominance of biofiction, Virginia Woolf has been of crucial importance. In this special issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany, leading Woolf scholars and biofiction scholars discuss Woolf’s works in relation to biofiction as well as biofictions about Woolf. Here is a link to the special issue: https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.wordpress.com/virginia-woolf-miscellany-issue-93-spring-summer-2018/
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. With regard to the origins, evolution, and now dominance of biofiction, Virginia Woolf has been of crucial importance. In this special issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany, leading Woolf scholars and biofiction scholars discuss Woolf’s works in relation to biofiction as well as biofictions about Woolf. Here is a link to the special issue: https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.wordpress.com/virginia-woolf-miscellany-issue-93-spring-summer-2018/
Research Interests: Aesthetics, Feminist Theory, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, and 14 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Feminism, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodern Literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Feminism and Social Justice, Bloomsbury Group, Biographical Novel, Biofiction, and Virginia Woolf Studies
Joanna Scott is one of the most gifted and prominent novelists of the last thirty years. This is a brief description of Scott and her work.
Research Interests: Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, and 13 moreModernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, 9/11 Literature, 9/11 Cultural Production, Austrian History, Postmodern, Egon Schiele, Biographical Novel, Biofiction, Post 9/11 literature, and Modernism and Postmodernism As Literary Styles
Biofiction has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But what exactly is it? And how did it come into being? The editor of the American Book Review asked me to guest-edit a special issue about biofiction in order to answer... more
Biofiction has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But what exactly is it? And how did it come into being? The editor of the American Book Review asked me to guest-edit a special issue about biofiction in order to answer these and many other questions. In my introduction, I survey some of the major moments in the evolution of biofiction and I clarify how my contributors to this special issue have expanded our understanding of the literary form.
Research Interests: History, Cultural History, Irish Studies, Spanish Literature, Medieval Literature, and 46 moreModernism (Literature), Irish Literature, Medieval History, Australian Studies, Italian Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Shakespeare, The Historical Novel, French Revolution, Australia, Italian Literature, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Postmodernism, Irish History, Postmodern Fiction, Georg Lukacs, Modernism, Renaissance literature, Australian History, Oscar Wilde, Katherine Mansfield, British and Irish History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Australian Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Leo Tolstoy, Postmodern, Georg Lukács, Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, Biofiction, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf Studies, Roger Casement, Anne Hathaway Shakespeare, Emma Donoghue, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
When it was first published, many Black writers condemned William Styron's biographical novel The Confessions of Nat Turner. What few scholars have noticed is that there were many Black intellectuals who defended and even supported Styron... more
When it was first published, many Black writers condemned William Styron's biographical novel The Confessions of Nat Turner. What few scholars have noticed is that there were many Black intellectuals who defended and even supported Styron and his novel. Is there a way to explain the different responses? I argue that there is. Black separatists (Vincent Harding, John Henrik Clark, Charles Hamilton, and John Oliver Killens, to mention only a few) faulted Styron and his novel, while Black integrationists (James Baldwin, John Hope Franklin, and J. Saunders Redding, to mention only a few) defended Styron and his novel. What differentiated Black writers was an intellectual orientation: Black separatists have an atomistic conception of human identity, which leads them to treat groups of people as ontologically separate and distinct. Given this approach, Black separatists treat homosexuals as separate and distinct from heterosexuals, and in the writings of prominent Black separatists, they say disgraceful things about gay people. By stark contrast, Black integrationists deconstruct binaries like black and white as well as gay and straight. Not surprisingly, black integrationists have a much more positive approach to homosexuals than black separatists. If we approach Styron's novel through an integrationist lens, we will arrive at a very different interpretation than the Black separatists.
Research Interests: American Literature, Black Studies Or African American Studies, American Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, African American Literature, and 19 moreCivil Rights, Postmodernism, African American Culture, African American History, Postmodern Fiction, Civil Rights Movement, African American Studies, Civil Rights (History), Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Postmodern, African-American Political Thought, Malcolm X, Integration, Nat Turner, Separatism, and William Styron
The Mississippi Quarterly has just released a special issue about William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner. This issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of the publication of Styron's novel. I am not allowed to post the essays, but I... more
The Mississippi Quarterly has just released a special issue about William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner. This issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of the publication of Styron's novel. I am not allowed to post the essays, but I can post the introduction, which briefly describes the essays in the issue. Now that we realize that The Confessions of Nat Turner is a biographical novel and how biographical novels differ from historical novels, we can see this text in a new light.
Research Interests: American Literature, American History, American Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 19 moreRace and Ethnicity, Civil Rights, Postmodernism, Racism, Postmodern Fiction, Civil Rights Movement, Philosophy Of Race, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Postmodernism (Literature), Gender and Race, Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Postmodern, Jim Crow Segregation, Biofiction, William Styron, and The New Jim Crow
Now that academia has recognized the value of biofiction studies, where do scholars go from here? For the next decade, there is going to be a need for much scholarship about biofiction, and in this very short essay, I suggest some... more
Now that academia has recognized the value of biofiction studies, where do scholars go from here? For the next decade, there is going to be a need for much scholarship about biofiction, and in this very short essay, I suggest some productive lines of inquiry. There is much work to be done.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Russian Studies, Russian Literature, Irish Literature, Emily Dickinson, and 29 moreThe Historical Novel, Hebrew Bible, Abraham Lincoln, Canadian Literature, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, Irish History, Russian History, Neo-Victorian Literature, Katherine Mansfield, Bible, Australian Literature, J.M. Coetzee, Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston, Hilary Mantel, Bloomsbury Group, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Moses, Biofiction, Gabriel García Márquez, Virginia Woolf Studies, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Marilyn Monroe, Thomas Cromwell, and Sally Hemings
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. To get some better insight into the nature of biofiction, the editor of The American Book Review commissioned me to guest-edit a special issue about... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. To get some better insight into the nature of biofiction, the editor of The American Book Review commissioned me to guest-edit a special issue about biofiction. This issue contains essays and reviews from some of the most famous scholars and authors of biofiction today. Here is a link to the special issue: http://muse.jhu.edu/issue/38180
Here is a link to the introduction to the issue: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/689189/pdf
Here is a link to the introduction to the issue: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/689189/pdf
Research Interests: French Literature, Spanish Literature, Spanish, Victorian Studies, Australian Studies, and 41 moreItalian Studies, Mexican Studies, Shakespeare, The Historical Novel, Australia, Victorian Literature, Italian Literature, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, Australian Indigenous Studies, Postmodern Fiction, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Italian Renaissance Art, Neo-Victorian Literature, Australian History, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Neo-Victorian fiction, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Dmitri Shostakovich, Australian Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Mexican Literature, Bloomsbury Group, Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film, Postmodern, Julian Barnes, Georg Lukács, William Shakespeare, Biographical Novel, Death of the author, Neo-Victorian studies, Lytton Strachey, Biofiction, Virginia Woolf Studies, and Lizzie Borden
The biographical novel has supplanted the classical historical novel. What has caused this is a shift in our contemporary theories of consciousness, which radically impact the way we understand and do history. Traditional historical... more
The biographical novel has supplanted the classical historical novel. What has caused this is a shift in our contemporary theories of consciousness, which radically impact the way we understand and do history. Traditional historical novelists have a positivist approach to history, so they picture the external factors that objectively shape and determine consciousness and thereby make historical collisions possible. Biographical novelists believe that there is a surreal dimension to consciousness, so they shift the focus from the objective external world to the subjective internal world in order to picture the forces that have given birth to major historical collisions. To make my case, I analyze two biographical novels, one about Friedrich Nietzsche, and the other about Walter Benjamin. For a fuller development of this idea, see chapter three of my book The American Biographical Novel.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, Theology, Modernism (Literature), Political Theory, and 28 moreThe Historical Novel, Cultural Theory, Surrealism, Creativity and Consciousness, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Consciousness, Postmodernism, Holocaust Studies, Postmodern Fiction, Georg Lukacs, Modernism, Literature and Philosophy, Philosophy and Literature, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Gershom Scholem, History and literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Holocaust Literature, Consciousness Studies, Postmodern, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Biofiction, Consciousness and Creativity, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
To what degree and in what sense did religion and the God-concept play a crucial role in justifying the West’s project of colonization? In this essay, I analyze the work of Frantz Fanon in order to answer this question. To do so, I make... more
To what degree and in what sense did religion and the God-concept play a crucial role in justifying the West’s project of colonization? In this essay, I analyze the work of Frantz Fanon in order to answer this question. To do so, I make a distinction between two types of atheists, epistemological skeptics and sociocultural critics of faith. Epistemological skeptics claim that, given the limitations of the human psyche, rational humans cannot, in good conscience, believe in God. By contrast, sociocultural critics of faith argue that, given the way the God concept functions to justify massive systems of political oppression, responsible humans should not believe in God. I argue that Fanon belongs to the latter tradition. For a more detailed explication of this approach, see chapter one of my book African American Atheists and Political Liberation.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, African Studies, and 24 moreEpistemology, Atheism, New Testament, History of Christianity, Postcolonial Studies, African History, Cultural Theory, Africa, Continental Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Colonialism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Post-Colonialism, Biblical Theology, Michel Foucault, Postcolonial Theory, History of Atheism, Postcolonial Literature, Jean Paul Sartre, Bible, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Martinique, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Many scholars argue that secularization is well underway in the West. But Michel Foucault made a startling claim, saying that what we have witnessed in the West is not "de-Christianization," but rather, a process of "in-depth... more
Many scholars argue that secularization is well underway in the West. But Michel Foucault made a startling claim, saying that what we have witnessed in the West is not "de-Christianization," but rather, a process of "in-depth Christianization." Hence Foucault's claim: "modern states begin to take shape while Christian structures tighten their grip on individual existence." To put the matter simply, Foucault considers secularization an incoherent idea that has significantly distorted our understanding of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political, and literary history. I use Foucault's work in order to illuminate the version of Christianity that Hitler and the Nazis adopted. For a fuller treatment of the ideas in this essay, see my essay "The Sacred Imagined Nation" and chapters three and four from my book The Modernist God State--in these two chapters, I do a much more extensive analysis of Foucault's writings.
Research Interests: Christianity, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, History of Christianity, and 18 moreTheodor Adorno, Language and Ideology, Ideology, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Enlightenment, Friedrich Nietzsche, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Michel Foucault, Secularization, Hannah Arendt, Nazism, Adolf Hitler, Benedict Anderson, Joseph Goebbels, History of Christian Thought, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and Theories of Secularization
After hearing about T.S. Eliot's conversion to Christianity, Virginia Woolf made a disparaging remark about Eliot in a letter to her sister: "can you imagine anything more obscene than a person sitting by the fire and believing in God."... more
After hearing about T.S. Eliot's conversion to Christianity, Virginia Woolf made a disparaging remark about Eliot in a letter to her sister: "can you imagine anything more obscene than a person sitting by the fire and believing in God." What led Woolf to make such an uncharitable remark? In this essay, I examine the contrasting literary projects of Woolf and Eliot. I clarify how Woolf's atheistic and Eliot's religious worldviews are in irreconcilable conflict.
Research Interests: Christianity, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Political Philosophy, Epistemology, and 17 moreEnglish Literature, Philosophy Of Religion, Atheism, Modernism (Literature), History of Christianity, Literary Criticism, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Michel Foucault, Secularization, History of Atheism, Modernism, Religious Epistemology, Modern Atheism, and Virginia Woolf Studies
After writing "The Literary Modernist Assault on Philosophy," I decided to focus on Virginia Woolf's critique of philosophy. At first, Woolf, like most Bloomsbury writers, was both moved and influenced by the philosophy of G.E. Moore.... more
After writing "The Literary Modernist Assault on Philosophy," I decided to focus on Virginia Woolf's critique of philosophy. At first, Woolf, like most Bloomsbury writers, was both moved and influenced by the philosophy of G.E. Moore. But around the year 1920, she started to get very critical of Moore and philosophy more generally. This frustration with philosophy becomes most apparent in her novels To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and in this essay, I explain why Woolf turned against philosophy. Hume scholars, in particular, might be amused by Woolf's depiction of the philosopher in To the Lighthouse, which I discuss in the essay.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Psychology, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Modernism (Literature), and 23 moreAldous Huxley, Continental Philosophy, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Twentieth Century Literature, Twentieth Century History and Culture, History Of Psychology, Richard Rorty, Modernism, Bertrand Russell, David Hume, Continental (vs.) Analytical Philosophy, Joseph Conrad, Bloomsbury Group, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, E.M. Forster, Psychology and Philosophy, Leslie Stephen, History of Philosophy, G.E. Moore, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
After publishing Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston started working on a biographical novel about Herod the Great. The novel was never finished, but what we have of it is in the Smathers Library at the University of Florida.... more
After publishing Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston started working on a biographical novel about Herod the Great. The novel was never finished, but what we have of it is in the Smathers Library at the University of Florida. Hurston wrote many prefaces and introductions to the novel. They are very useful, because they give us a clear sense of her objectives. It is a real tragedy that she never completed this novel. But fortunately, we have her introduction to the work. I have compiled what I believe is the best version of her introduction to the novel, and Callaloo published it. Here is a copy of Hurston's introduction to Herod the Great. For an analysis of the novel, see my essay "Zora Neale Hurston's Herod the Great: A Study of the Theological Origins of Modernist Anti-Semitism."
Research Interests: Christianity, Black Studies Or African American Studies, History of Christianity, Hebrew Bible, Early Christianity, and 23 moreAfrican American Literature, Biblical Studies, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Biblical Theology, Jewish - Christian Relations, African American History, Black feminism, Anti-Semitism, African American Studies, Twentieth Century Germany, New Testament and Christian Origins, Black Women's Studies, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Zora Neale Hurston, Nazi Germany, Nazism, African-American Political Thought, Adolf Hitler, Jesus Christ, Christian Studies, and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
In the 1950s, Hurston wrote a biographical novel about Herod. She never completed the manuscript, but since it is in the archives at the University of Florida, I have been able to read what we have of it. Hurston did not believe the... more
In the 1950s, Hurston wrote a biographical novel about Herod. She never completed the manuscript, but since it is in the archives at the University of Florida, I have been able to read what we have of it. Hurston did not believe the story about Herod in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. She believed that early Christians concocted the story in order to demonize Jews. The most scandalous thing Hurston articulates in this work is that the Christian demonization of the Jew became the template for the models of racism dominating the twentieth century. Her argument is very complex but worth taking seriously. More people need to know about Hurston's searing critique of the Bible and Christianity more generally.
Research Interests: American Literature, Religion, Christianity, Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, and 24 moreAmerican Studies, New Testament, History of Christianity, Race and Racism, Literary Criticism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Antisemitism (Prejudice), African American Literature, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), History Of The Bible/Biblical Canon, Twentieth Century Literature, Secularization, History of Biblical Interpretation, Holocaust Studies, New Testament and Christian Origins, Religious History, Zora Neale Hurston, New Testament Textual Criticism, New Testament Studies, Biofiction, History of Christian Thought, and History of Reception of Biblical Texts
What is the link between theology and autocracy? Zora Neale Hurston offered some answers to this question through her biblical biographical novel about Moses, which is really about theocratic political systems in Nazi Germany and the... more
What is the link between theology and autocracy? Zora Neale Hurston offered some answers to this question through her biblical biographical novel about Moses, which is really about theocratic political systems in Nazi Germany and the United States. It is generally believed that African Americans revere Moses, who was supposedly sent by God to set his people free. But actually, some of the most prominent black writers of the twentieth century consider Moses a very dangerous figure. This is the case because they believe that Moses, like the God-concept, can be used to justify both slavery and violence. In fact, many twentieth-century black writers claim that Moses was an effective political instrument for establishing western theocracies. Given this view, many black writers consider secularization an incoherent fiction that has blinded us to the role religion plays in the formation of western political systems.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, American Literature, Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Theology, and 27 moreModernism (Literature), Political Theory, History of Christianity, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Theory, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Social Justice, African American Literature, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Biblical Theology, Secularization, African American History, African American Studies, 20th Century American Literature, Modernism, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Christian Theology, Richard Wright, African-American Political Thought, Moses, Oppression, Christian theology and biblical studies, and Theories of Secularization
Secularization theory has blinded us to the role Christianity played in the making of Hitler and the Nazis. At the Nuremberg Trials, the lawyers wanted to figure out how prominent Nazis could justify their brutal treatment of the Jews.... more
Secularization theory has blinded us to the role Christianity played in the making of Hitler and the Nazis. At the Nuremberg Trials, the lawyers wanted to figure out how prominent Nazis could justify their brutal treatment of the Jews. When they questioned the prominent Nazi Julius Streicher, he said there was precedent for antisemitism in Luther's work. In fact, he claims that Luther would be put on trial were he alive in the 1940s. But the Tribunal, which took a secularization approach to Hitler and the Nazis, did not want to acknowledge that Christianity had anything to do with the Holocaust. However, if you read Streicher's testimony and his newspaper closely and carefully, you will realize that it is impossible to understand the Nazis' exterminationist agenda without taking into account their version of Christianity. I argue that secularization theory has prevented us from seeing the role Christianity played in the making of the Holocaust.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Religion, Christianity, Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, and 24 moreGerman Studies, Theology, German History, History of Christianity, Genocide Studies, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Biblical Studies, Biblical Theology, Secularization, Twentieth Century History and Culture, Second World War, Holocaust Studies, Martin Luther, Nazi Germany, Religious Studies, Genocide, Christian Theology, Nazism, Lutheran Theology, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Christian Antisemitism, Adolf Hitler, History of Christian Thought, and Nuremberg Trials
Many of you have messaged me, asking for the chapter about the Nazis' specific version of Christianity from my book The Modernist God State. This is that chapter. My argument is that it is impossible to understand the Nazis' version of... more
Many of you have messaged me, asking for the chapter about the Nazis' specific version of Christianity from my book The Modernist God State. This is that chapter. My argument is that it is impossible to understand the Nazis' version of Christianity without taking into account their debt to Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. I just reread the chapter, and I still think it is correct. More importantly, I think it has become even more significant in light of Donald Trump's election to the presidency. I'm currently writing an essay drawing parallels between the two.
Research Interests: Christianity, Atheism, History of Christianity, Religion and Politics, Secularization, and 16 moreHolocaust Studies, Politics of Secularism, Immanuel Kant, Secularisms and Secularities, Martin Luther, Holocaust Literature, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Nazism, Secularism, New Atheism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Adolf Hitler, The Holocaust, Joseph Goebbels, and History of Christian Thought
For Nietzsche, killing God would improve the quality of life considerably. Contrary to the nihilistic interpretations of Nietzsche, which hold that he dispenses with God in order to sanction an anything-goes philosophy, Nietzsche holds... more
For Nietzsche, killing God would improve the quality of life considerably. Contrary to the nihilistic interpretations of Nietzsche, which hold that he dispenses with God in order to sanction an anything-goes philosophy, Nietzsche holds that belief in God is degrading and destroying the human. If God exists, then we have a nature that God created and knows, which means that all we can do is passively discover the God-created laws of our being. To liberate the 'human' from the tyranny of a predetermined nature and discourse, atheism is a first and necessary step. Should humans do this, they would be in a better position to create a more life-affirming relationship with the self, the world, and others. For Nietzsche, killing God does not lead to nihilistic despair, as many would have you believe. Rather, killing God could lead to psychological wholeness and more productive human friendships.
Research Interests: Christianity, Intellectual History, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Metaphysics, and 15 morePhilosophy Of Language, Rhetoric, Atheism, History of Christianity, Continental Philosophy, Truth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Free Will, Moral Philosophy, Theories Of Truth, Freedom, and History of Philosophy
For the longest time, scholars have suggested that biofiction is an innovative form of biography, so the bio in biofiction has been considered an accurate representation of the biographical subject. In this essay, I demonstrate that... more
For the longest time, scholars have suggested that biofiction is an innovative form of biography, so the bio in biofiction has been considered an accurate representation of the biographical subject. In this essay, I demonstrate that authors of biofiction do not believe that they are accurately representing the biographical subject. Rather, they flagrantly admit that they are merely using the biographical subject in order to project their own vision of life and the world. This significantly changes the way we should understand and assess biofiction. This essay was the introduction to a cluster of academic essays and process pieces about biofiction that I edited for the journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. Routledge has made this essay open access. Here is a link to the special issue: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/raut20/31/1 Here is a link to my essay:
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Transgender Studies, Thomas Mann, Literary Criticism, Hebrew Bible, and 27 moreAfrican American Literature, Biblical Studies, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Biblical Theology, Theories of Gender and Transgender, African American Studies, Georg Lukacs, Modernism, Literary History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Bible, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Life Writing (Literature), Zora Neale Hurston, John Brown, Biography and Life-Writing, Moses, Biofiction, Nat Turner, William Styron, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and Marilyn Monroe
I argue that secularization theory has distorted our understanding of twentieth-century intellectual, political, and literary history by preventing us from seeing the degree to which the God-concept and religion have determined the shape... more
I argue that secularization theory has distorted our understanding of twentieth-century intellectual, political, and literary history by preventing us from seeing the degree to which the God-concept and religion have determined the shape of dominant political powers in the West. Put simply, there is a theology implicit in what I refer to as the sacred imagined nation, thus debunking contemporary secularization theory. It was this theology that was underwriting colonialism, imperialism, and, ultimately, anti-black racism, and antisemitism.
Research Interests: Christianity, Intellectual History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Comparative Literature, History of Christianity, and 42 morePostcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Antisemitism (Prejudice), African American Literature, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Post-Colonialism, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Racism, Michel Foucault, Secularization, Mark Twain, Postcolonial Theory, African American Studies, Comparative Secularism, Postcolonial Literature, Antisemitism/Racisms, Intellectual and cultural history, New Testament and Christian Origins, Secularisms and Secularities, William Faulkner, Religious History, Postmodern Literature, Zora Neale Hurston, Rudyard Kipling, James Baldwin, History of Religious Studies, Joseph Conrad, American Religious History, Religious Studies, Christian Theology, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Richard Wright, Secularism, E.M. Forster, Moses, Benedict Anderson, Christian theology and biblical studies, and Heart of Darkness
When teaching a course on modernism, I noticed that many prominent writers (Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster) made some unkind remarks about philosophers and philosophy. What prompted this... more
When teaching a course on modernism, I noticed that many prominent writers (Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster) made some unkind remarks about philosophers and philosophy. What prompted this assault? I offer some answers in this essay, but I offer more extensive and specific answers in my essay "Modernist Anti-Philosophicalism and Virginia Woolf's Critique of Philosophy" and my book The Modernist God State.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Analytic Philosophy, Modernism (Literature), Aldous Huxley, and 15 moreContinental Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Modernism, Bertrand Russell, Modernist Literature, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, D.H.Lawrence, History of Philosophy, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Modernist and Postmodernist Literature
There are many types of atheists, which I briefly discuss in this essay. But I foreground those who focus on language. As Michel Foucault claims: "the death of God profoundly influenced our language." But how? The liber mundi... more
There are many types of atheists, which I briefly discuss in this essay. But I foreground those who focus on language. As Michel Foucault claims: "the death of God profoundly influenced our language." But how? The liber mundi tradition holds that the world, created by God, is like a readable text, written in a decipherable language. Atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, and Foucault came to the conclusion that there is no language best suited to signify the world, because there is no God that created the world as a readable text. Therefore, when we use language to signify the world, there is an element of violence implicit in the usage of language. Put differently, instead of neutrally and objectively representing the world, language is a violent imposition on both the world and the other, and those doing the violence take considerable joy in their linguistic imposition, which is why, I argue, there is a link between atheism and sadism. Within this framework, sadism is not always a bad thing. In fact, it can be quite good. But above all, it is a necessary condition of being.
Research Interests: Atheism, Modernism (Literature), Phenomenology, Language and Ideology, Ideology, and 15 moreContinental Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, History of Atheism, Richard Rorty, Jean Paul Sartre, Modernism, New Atheism, Matthew Arnold, and T.s. Eliot the Waste Land
Was Paul Celan an atheist or a believer? Is his poetry atheistic? Or, is it religious, but religious in the sense of being the theological views of a tortured believer? Does Celan's religious orientation even matter? I answer these and... more
Was Paul Celan an atheist or a believer? Is his poetry atheistic? Or, is it religious, but religious in the sense of being the theological views of a tortured believer? Does Celan's religious orientation even matter? I answer these and many other questions in this essay by looking closely at the way Celan portrays God in his poetry.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, German Studies, German Literature, Atheism, and 18 moreTheology, Romanian History, New Testament, Poetry, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Romanian Studies, Holocaust Studies, History of Atheism, Contemporary Poetry, Karl Marx, Paul Celan, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Adolf Hitler
Donald Trump and Christian nationalism: I published this essay more than ten years ago, but given the triumph of the religious right through Trump's election, this essay has come to have even more relevance and significance for today.... more
Donald Trump and Christian nationalism: I published this essay more than ten years ago, but given the triumph of the religious right through Trump's election, this essay has come to have even more relevance and significance for today. There is a comprehensive psychology behind militant forms of Christian nationalism. Through my analysis of Faulkner's novel Light in August, I identify and define the militant nature of Christian nationalism. If you want a picture of the typical Christian that voted for and supported Trump, Faulkner's novel Light in August is one of the best novels to read, and I explain why in this essay.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, American Literature, Religion, Christianity, Sociology of Religion, and 19 morePhilosophy Of Religion, History of Christianity, The Novel, Religion and Politics, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Language and Ideology, Ideology, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), National Identity, Language Ideology, Modernism, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Political Ideology, William Faulkner, Christianity and Nationalism, Christian Studies, Christianity and Politics, and Donald Trump
Recent studies have been challenging and complicating our understanding of secularization, but most scholars assume that secularization is well underway. In this essay, I briefly examine the conflicting versions of secularization in... more
Recent studies have been challenging and complicating our understanding of secularization, but most scholars assume that secularization is well underway. In this essay, I briefly examine the conflicting versions of secularization in three books. I ultimately try to show why it is naive to think that secularization has begun to take hold in the West. I specifically show how Nietzsche was fully aware of the fact that religion was becoming more dominant in the political sphere by the late nineteenth century and how he predicted that it would become horribly dangerous by the twentieth century. To clarify my point, I focus on the Nazis' version of Christianity, which Nietzsche defined with stunning precision.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Cultural Studies, German Studies, German Literature, and 18 moreGerman History, The Novel, Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, Antisemitism (Prejudice), Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), T.S. Eliot, Twentieth Century Literature, Secularization, Holocaust Studies, German Literature and Culture, Holocaust, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Moses, and Cutural Studies
Mario Vargas Llosa has published many first-rate biographical novels. In this interview, I focus mainly on his novel The Dream of the Celt, which is about the famous humanitarian, Roger Casement, an Irishman who went to the Congo and the... more
Mario Vargas Llosa has published many first-rate biographical novels. In this interview, I focus mainly on his novel The Dream of the Celt, which is about the famous humanitarian, Roger Casement, an Irishman who went to the Congo and the Amazon to expose crimes against humanity and to combat colonialism. This work led him to understand the sense in which and the degree to which Ireland was a colonized country. In his novel, Vargas Llosa charts the transformations inside Casement from being sympathetic to colonialism to being a critic of it, from considering himself British to considering himself an anti-British Irishman. The aesthetic-political act of decolonization from both a psychological and linguistic perspective is of crucial importance.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Spanish Literature, Irish Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Colonialism, and 14 morePostmodernism, Irish History, Postcolonial Theory, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Decolonialization, Postcolonial theory (Cultural Theory), Postmodern Literature, Decolonial Turn, Decolonial Thought, Mario Vargas Llosa, Biofiction, Roger Casement, and Postcolonialism
This is an interview with Prashant Maurya about the differences between historical fiction and biographical fiction. My answers during the interview were much longer and more rambling, but this contains some brief responses to the... more
This is an interview with Prashant Maurya about the differences between historical fiction and biographical fiction. My answers during the interview were much longer and more rambling, but this contains some brief responses to the questions.
Research Interests:
Roger Casement was an extraordinary man who exposed political atrocities in the Congo and the Amazon, and he tried to bring about Irish independence from England. But because he was gay, his reputation was destroyed and he was eventually... more
Roger Casement was an extraordinary man who exposed political atrocities in the Congo and the Amazon, and he tried to bring about Irish independence from England. But because he was gay, his reputation was destroyed and he was eventually hanged for treason. Sabina Murray has authored a spectacular biographical novel about Casement, and in this interview, she explains why she wrote the novel and why Casement is such an important figure for us today.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish (early and modern), Irish Literature, Postcolonial Studies, The Historical Novel, and 15 moreIrish Politics, Agency Theory, Irish History, Modern Ireland, Postcolonial Theory, Autonomy, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modern Irish Language and Literature, Postcolonial Literature, British and Irish History, Postcolonial Studies (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Ireland, and Agency
In 1931, the Danish artist Einar Wegener had a sex confirmation surgery, after which she came to be known as Lili Elbe. David Ebershoff authored a novel about Elbe's life in 2000, and in this interview, he clarifies how Elbe functions as... more
In 1931, the Danish artist Einar Wegener had a sex confirmation surgery, after which she came to be known as Lili Elbe. David Ebershoff authored a novel about Elbe's life in 2000, and in this interview, he clarifies how Elbe functions as a literary symbol of the artist that shapes one's own life into being.
Research Interests: Transgender Studies, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, and 15 moreHomosexuality and Literature, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Transgender, Homosexuality, Postmodernity, Postmodern, Transsexuality and Transgender, Biofiction, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies
Chika Unigwe is a Nigeria-Belgian author who published Zwarte Messias, a biographical novel about Olaudah Equiano, and she is currently working on a biographical novel about Equiano's daughter, Joanna. In this interview, Unigwe provides... more
Chika Unigwe is a Nigeria-Belgian author who published Zwarte Messias, a biographical novel about Olaudah Equiano, and she is currently working on a biographical novel about Equiano's daughter, Joanna. In this interview, Unigwe provides an excellent way to understand the differences between the historical novel and the biographical novel.
Research Interests: American History, African Studies, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Social Justice, and 15 moreAfrican Literature, History of Slavery, Abolition of Slavery, Literary Theory, Feminism, Anti-slavery, Slave Trade, African American History, Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, Life Writing (Literature), Feminism and Social Justice, Africana Studies, Agency, Biofiction, and Modern Day Slavery
Anchee Min has written many biographical novels, including one about Jiang Ching, the wife of Mao Tse Tung. While Becoming Madame Mao is set in and about China, Min claims that the story about Jiang Ching can be used to illuminate... more
Anchee Min has written many biographical novels, including one about Jiang Ching, the wife of Mao Tse Tung. While Becoming Madame Mao is set in and about China, Min claims that the story about Jiang Ching can be used to illuminate cultural ailments in numerous places and times. She even suggests that Jiang Ching's story could be used to shed light on contemporary America. In this interview, Min discusses how biographical novels function to diagnose cultural ailments and to offer new and healthier ways of individual thinking and cultural being.
Research Interests: American Literature, Chinese Studies, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Chinese Language and Culture, and 15 morePostmodernism, China, Contemporary Literature, Literary History, China studies, Postmodernism (Literature), Contemporary China, Postmodern Literature, Chinese history (History), Life Writing (Literature), Cultural Revolution, Maoism, Biography and Life-Writing, Mao Zedong, and Biofiction
Emma Donoghue has published a number of spectacular biographical novels. In this interview, she clarifies some of her objectives when writing a novel about an actual historical person. She also clarifies some of the distinctions between... more
Emma Donoghue has published a number of spectacular biographical novels. In this interview, she clarifies some of her objectives when writing a novel about an actual historical person. She also clarifies some of the distinctions between the historical and the biographical novel.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, Transgender Studies, Literary Criticism, and 15 moreGay And Lesbian Studies, Literary Theory, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Postmodernism, Irish History, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Contemporary Literature, British and Irish History, Postmodern Literature, Transgender, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Ireland, Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies
Colum McCann has authored two spectacular biographical novels, Dancer and TransAtlantic. In this interview, McCann explains what he tries to accomplish in and through his biographical novels.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Russian Studies, Russian Literature, Aesthetics, Irish Literature, and 15 moreJames Joyce, Postcolonial Studies, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Irish History, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Modernism, British and Irish History, Frederick Douglass, Life Writing (Literature), Biography and Life-Writing, and Colum McCann
Biographical novelists feature an actual historical figure, but the authors take many liberties with both their protagonist and history. In this forum, I asked three prominent biographical novelists to explain how they use their... more
Biographical novelists feature an actual historical figure, but the authors take many liberties with both their protagonist and history. In this forum, I asked three prominent biographical novelists to explain how they use their biographical subject to engage history and to critique the political. Authors were Bruce Duffy (Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arthur Rimbaud), Lance Olsen (Friedrich Nietzsche), and Jay Parini (Walter Benjamin, Leo Tolstoy, and Herman Melville).
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Modernism (Literature), Nineteenth Century Studies, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 24 moreWalter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Postmodern Fiction, Georg Lukacs, Modernism, Literature and Philosophy, Historiographic Metafiction, Philosophy and Literature, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Leo Tolstoy, Postmodernity, Herman Melville, Postmodern, Georg Lukács, Literary Theory and Criticism, Arthur Rimbaud, Biographical Novel, Biofiction, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Rainer Maria Rilke is certainly one of the most famous and important authors of the twentieth century. As such, making him the protagonist of a biographical novel would be no easy task. And yet, Mark Allen Cunningham did exactly that in... more
Rainer Maria Rilke is certainly one of the most famous and important authors of the twentieth century. As such, making him the protagonist of a biographical novel would be no easy task. And yet, Mark Allen Cunningham did exactly that in his novel Lost Son, which sheds considerable light on Rilke and the context in which his work came to fruition. This is my interview with Cunningham about his Rilke biographical novel.
Research Interests: German Studies, German Literature, Modernism (Literature), German History, Poetry, and 22 moreModernist poetry, German Language, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Modernist Literature, Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Life Writing (Literature), Modernist Studies, Postmodernity, Lou Andreas-Salome, Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, Rainer Maria Rilke, Biofiction, and Auguste Rodin
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most provocative and insightful thinkers of all time, which explains why he is the subject of so many biographical novels. In my estimation, Lance Olsen's Nietzsche's Kisses is the best biographical... more
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most provocative and insightful thinkers of all time, which explains why he is the subject of so many biographical novels. In my estimation, Lance Olsen's Nietzsche's Kisses is the best biographical novel about Nietzsche out there. In his novel, Olsen brilliantly debunks the view that Nietzsche contributed to the making of Hitler and the Nazis. What actually happened is that Nietzsche's sister, who altered and forged some of "Nietzsche's" writings, tried to make her brother's work consistent with her anti-Semitic worldview. In this interview, Olsen and I discuss Nietzsche's life and work in relation to Olsen's novel.
Research Interests: German Studies, German Literature, German History, Continental Philosophy, German Language, and 28 moreGerman Idealism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Holocaust Studies, Nietzsche, 20th Century German History, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, German Literature and Culture, David Foster Wallace, Historiographic Metafiction, 19th-century German philosophy, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Holocaust Literature, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Historiographic Metafictions, Narratology and Postmodern Literature, Postmodern, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Adolf Hitler, Biofiction, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Joanna Scott author a spectacular biographical novel about the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. This is my interview with her about both her novel and the nature of biofiction more generally.
Research Interests: Aesthetics, Art History, Austria (European History), Art Theory, Aesthetics and Politics, and 12 moreGeorg Lukacs, Contemporary American Literature, Fin de Siecle Literature & Culture, Austrian Literature, Fin de siècle Vienna, Austrian History, Georg Lukács, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Vienna, Biofiction, and Viennese Art
Madison Smartt Bell published a brilliant biographical novel about Toussaint. In this interview, I ask him some questions about his strategies and objectives as a biographical novelist. Very interesting material here.
Research Interests: American Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, and 12 moreHaiti, Haitian Revolution, Post-Colonialism, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Postcolonial Theory, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Haitian Literature, Haitian History, and Biofiction
Why did biofiction come into being? How is the biofictional literary symbol different from the traditional literary symbol? What role did postmodernism play in the formation of biofiction? What types of biographical novels are there? I... more
Why did biofiction come into being? How is the biofictional literary symbol different from the traditional literary symbol? What role did postmodernism play in the formation of biofiction? What types of biographical novels are there? I answer many of these questions in this interview with Rhys Tranter, which focuses on my two most recent books The American Biographical Novel and Biographical Fiction: A Reader. At the conclusion of the interview, I discuss the two book projects that I am currently working on, which are about Irish Biofiction and a book of interviews with biographical novelists across the globe. Here is a link to the interview: https://rhystranter.com/2016/12/20/michael-lackey-american-biographical-novel-interview/
Research Interests: German Studies, Irish Studies, German Literature, Modernism (Literature), Irish Literature, and 47 moreGerman History, Thomas Mann, Literary Criticism, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Thomas Jefferson, 20th Century German Literature, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, John Banville, Postmodernism, Irish History, Postmodern Fiction, German Literature and Culture, Modernism, Dostoevsky, British and Irish History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, J.M. Coetzee, Vladimir Nabokov, Zora Neale Hurston, Gay Literature, Sylvia Plath, Joseph Conrad, Postmodernity, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Postmodern, Stephen Crane, Existentialism, German language and literature, Arthur Rimbaud, Biographical Novel, Literature on Rafael Trujillo, Biofiction, Nabokov studies, Nabokov, Irish Nationalism, Heart of Darkness, Trujillo, Colum McCann, Marilyn Monroe, Sally Hemings, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Jay Parini has published biographical novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, and Herman Melville. This is my interview with Parini. He clarifies how biographical fiction differs from historical fiction, explains why biofiction came... more
Jay Parini has published biographical novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, and Herman Melville. This is my interview with Parini. He clarifies how biographical fiction differs from historical fiction, explains why biofiction came into being. This is one of my favorite interviews with a biographical novelist.
Research Interests: American Literature, Russian Studies, American Studies, Russian Literature, Jewish Studies, and 26 moreNineteenth Century Studies, Literary Criticism, Jewish History, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Holocaust Studies, Russian History, Modernism, Jewish Philosophy, Gershom Scholem, Modern Jewish History, Life Writing (Literature), Holocaust Literature, Leo Tolstoy, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Herman Melville, Nazism, Biography and Life-Writing, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Biographical Novel, The Holocaust, and Biofiction
Does truth differ from one discipline to the next? Russell Banks certainly thinks so. For instance, historians give readers a different kind of truth from fiction writers. In this interview, Banks suggests that we need to reflect on... more
Does truth differ from one discipline to the next? Russell Banks certainly thinks so. For instance, historians give readers a different kind of truth from fiction writers. In this interview, Banks suggests that we need to reflect on the implied truth contracts that authors establish with their readers. He specifically examines the kind of truth that readers get in biographical novels like Cloudsplitter, which is about John Brown's son Owen. This is an interview taken from my book Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Genre studies, Genre, Race and Racism, Literary Criticism, and 22 moreCritical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Truth, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Racism, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Genre Theory, Literary History, Theories Of Truth, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Life Writing (Literature), Anti-Racism, Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, Genre Analysis, and Biofiction
There has been much criticism of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, but much of this criticism is unjustified, because most critics do not understand the conventions of the biographical novel. In this interview, I ask Cunningham to define... more
There has been much criticism of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, but much of this criticism is unjustified, because most critics do not understand the conventions of the biographical novel. In this interview, I ask Cunningham to define the biographical novel and to clarify how The Hours functions and signifies as a biographical novel. His answers clarify one of the main reasons why the biographical novel has become a dominant aesthetic form in recent years.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Literary Criticism, Feminist Philosophy, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Literary Theory, and 14 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, Feminism, Postmodern Fiction, Michael Cunningham, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Gay and Lesbian History, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Feminism and Social Justice, Postmodern, and Virginia Woolf Studies
What is literary "truth"? How does it differ from other forms of "truth"? How can a creative writer make use of multiple figuratiions of truth in order to picture the world in its complexity and depth? In this interview, Julia Alvarez... more
What is literary "truth"? How does it differ from other forms of "truth"? How can a creative writer make use of multiple figuratiions of truth in order to picture the world in its complexity and depth? In this interview, Julia Alvarez answers these and many other questions about the nature of the biographical novel.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Literary Criticism, Truth, Literary Theory, and 16 morePostmodernism, Feminism, Postcolonial Feminism, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Dominican History, Theories Of Truth, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Feminism and Social Justice, Dominican Republic, Joseph Conrad, Biographical Novel, Biofiction, Republica Dominicana, and Julia Alvarez
This is my interview with Joyce Carol Oates, which is contained in my book Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists. Oates published a spectacular biographical novel about Marilyn Monroe, which is titled... more
This is my interview with Joyce Carol Oates, which is contained in my book Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists. Oates published a spectacular biographical novel about Marilyn Monroe, which is titled Blonde. In this interview, I wanted her to explain a shift in her work. Her novel Black Water is clearly based on Ted Kennedy, but she never refers to the character as Kennedy. Why did she decide to name the protagonist of Blonde after the actual historical figure? What is the value of changing the protagonist's name? What are the ethical problems of naming the protagonist after an actual historical figure? These were just a few of the questions I asked Oates to consider during the interview. In my estimation, Blonde is one of the top ten biographical novels.
Research Interests: American Literature, Feminist Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Biography, Twentieth Century Literature, and 20 morePostmodernism, Feminism, Postmodern Fiction, Biographical Methods, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, History and literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Life Writing (Literature), Feminism and Social Justice, Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, Joyce Carol Oates, Biographical Novel, John F. Kennedy, Biofiction, and Marilyn Monroe
Taken from my book Truthful Fictions, this is an interview with Edmund White, who has authored numerous books about prominent gay figures. In this interview, I focus on White's novel Hotel de Dream, which dramatizes the last few months... more
Taken from my book Truthful Fictions, this is an interview with Edmund White, who has authored numerous books about prominent gay figures. In this interview, I focus on White's novel Hotel de Dream, which dramatizes the last few months of the life of Stephen Crane. Crane actually started a novel about a young gay prostitute, but he ultimately destroyed it. In White's novel, Crane writes the story, and it gives readers access to and insight into the lives of gay men during the 1890s.
Research Interests: American Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Biography, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 9 moreBiographical Methods, Contemporary Literature, Gay and Lesbian History, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Life Writing (Literature), Stephen Crane, Biography and Life-Writing, Biofiction, and Edmund White
Sylvia Plath's life is just as fascinating as her poetry. It takes great skill to picture a life such as Plath's, which is what Kate Moses brilliantly did in her novel Wintering. This novel explores the last two years of Plath's life,... more
Sylvia Plath's life is just as fascinating as her poetry. It takes great skill to picture a life such as Plath's, which is what Kate Moses brilliantly did in her novel Wintering. This novel explores the last two years of Plath's life, when she was working on Ariel. Here is my interview with Moses, which is contained in my book Truthful Fictions.
Research Interests: American Literature, Feminist Theory, Depression, Poetry, Twentieth Century Literature, and 14 morePostmodernism, Feminism, Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Poetry, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Poetry, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Sylvia Plath, Contemporary American Poetry, Postmodern, Biofiction, and Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Fiction, and Drama
This is an interview about my book The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis' Christian Reich. In this interview, I explain why so many secularization theorists have given us a faulty picture of Hitler, the Nazis, and... more
This is an interview about my book The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis' Christian Reich. In this interview, I explain why so many secularization theorists have given us a faulty picture of Hitler, the Nazis, and twentieth-century politics. I also clarify why it is impossible to understand the Nazis without taking into account their version of Christianity. Finally, I explain why many traditional Christians and contemporary atheists are so sloppy and dishonest when it comes to addressing the Nazis' version of Christianity.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, American Literature, Christianity, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, and 28 moreAtheism, Modernism (Literature), Political Theory, Literature, History of Christianity, The Novel, Postcolonial Studies, Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Colonialism, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Secularization, Holocaust Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Politics of Secularism, History of Atheism, Modernism, Nazism, New Atheism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Adolf Hitler, and Leopold II (King of Belgians)
Paul Celan is one of the greatest poets of all time, and his volume Die Niemandrose is, in my estimation, his best work. This is a review of a book that uses Derridean deconstruction to analyze and interpret Celan's poems.
Research Interests: Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Holocaust Studies, and 15 moreNietzsche, Derridean Deconstruction, G.W.F. Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction, Holocaust Literature, Paul Celan, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Paul de Man, The Holocaust, and Holocaust Shoah
Nagele uses theory to get beyond theory. This is a book about reading and the abyss. One doesn't theorize one's intellectual way to the abyss. Rather, the Abgrund destabilizes theory. Recovering a pre-theory reading praxis could yield... more
Nagele uses theory to get beyond theory. This is a book about reading and the abyss. One doesn't theorize one's intellectual way to the abyss. Rather, the Abgrund destabilizes theory. Recovering a pre-theory reading praxis could yield far more than any theory. Some strong and provocative readings of Hoelderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Benjamin in this book.
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This is a review of A.N. Wilson's book God's Funeral. There are some good things in this book, but ultimately, Wilson has a narrow and limited understanding of atheism. Wilson would have his reader believe that atheism leads necessarily... more
This is a review of A.N. Wilson's book God's Funeral. There are some good things in this book, but ultimately, Wilson has a narrow and limited understanding of atheism. Wilson would have his reader believe that atheism leads necessarily to nihilistic despair. As I demonstrate, there are many atheists (Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and Michel Foucault) who gladly welcome the death of God.
Research Interests: Atheism, Nineteenth Century Studies, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, and 18 moreVirginia Woolf, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, History of Atheism, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Hardy, David Hume, Ludwig Feuerbach, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Thomas Paine, New Atheism, Atheism/Secular Studies, Nella Larsen, and Virginia Woolf Studies
This is a fairly positive view of Beatrice Martina Guenther's The Poetics of Death: The Short Prose of Kleist and Balzac.
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This is a review of Alfred Kazin's last book God and the American Writer. Kazin was brilliant. I gave this book a very good review.
Research Interests: American Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and 13 moreHistory of Slavery, Thomas Jefferson, William James, Abolition of Slavery, T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain, Religion and Literature, Literature and Religion, Walt Whitman, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
Uhlmann uses the work of the Enlightenment philosopher Spinoza to offer a model of thinking that illuminates the way modernist texts function. There are some slippages in Uhlmann's terminology, but this is nonetheless a solid book,... more
Uhlmann uses the work of the Enlightenment philosopher Spinoza to offer a model of thinking that illuminates the way modernist texts function. There are some slippages in Uhlmann's terminology, but this is nonetheless a solid book, especially for those working on theories about thinking and consciousness in literature.
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Creativity studies, James Joyce, Literary Criticism, and 15 moreCritical Thinking, Creativity and Consciousness, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Consciousness, Modernism, Baruch Spinoza, Literature and Philosophy, Critical Thinking and Creativity, William Faulkner, Philosophy and Literature, Vladimir Nabokov, Consciousness Studies, and Consciousness and Creativity
There are many similarities between Joseph Conrad's most famous novel and Nietzsche's first book. Nic Panagopoulos examines the potential links between the two authors. There are some useful insights sprinkled throughout the study, but... more
There are many similarities between Joseph Conrad's most famous novel and Nietzsche's first book. Nic Panagopoulos examines the potential links between the two authors. There are some useful insights sprinkled throughout the study, but ultimately, I don't think that Pamagopoulous succeeds.
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Carroll's book was published in 2001, and in some ways, it contributed to and participated in a massive revision of history regarding the Holocaust. For the longest time, scholars glibly assumed that Christianity played no role in the... more
Carroll's book was published in 2001, and in some ways, it contributed to and participated in a massive revision of history regarding the Holocaust. For the longest time, scholars glibly assumed that Christianity played no role in the making of Hitler and the Nazis. But as scholars have debunked the traditional secularization hypothesis and examined the version of Christianity that Hitler and the Nazis adopted, there has been increasing interest in the degree to which Christianity made the Holocaust possible. James Carroll is a Christian, but he believes that Christianity played a significant role in the making of the Holocaust. I have a few minor objections to Carroll's book, but on the whole, this is a fine study, certainly worth reading.
Research Interests: Christianity, Jewish Studies, History of Christianity, Catholic Studies, Crusades, and 14 moreAntisemitism (Prejudice), Catholic Social Teaching, Catholic Theology, History of Roman Catholicism, Holocaust Studies, Anti-Semitism, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Catholicism, Holocaust, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Holocaust, Catholic Church History, and Religious and Political Violence
This is a review of a book about E.M. Forster, which focuses on the pastoral and homosexuality in Forster's works.
Research Interests: British Literature, Queer Studies, Modernism (Literature), Queer Theory, Gay And Lesbian Studies, and 13 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, Homosexuality and Literature, Queer Theory (Literature), British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Ecocriticism, Modernism, Gay and Lesbian History, Homosexuality, Bloomsbury Group, E.M. Forster, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and Ecocritical Theory
Theories of the sublime were in wide circulation when William Blake wrote his poetry. De Luca's study does a masterful job clarifying how we can use those theories to illuminate the extremely complicated poetry of William Blake.
Research Interests: English Literature, Romanticism, Poetry, Edmund Burke, British Romanticism, and 6 moreThe Sublime, English Romanticism, William Blake, Classical British Literature of Romantic and Victorian Period, Indian Writing in English, Films and Indian Popular Culture., Romantic English poetry, and Theory of Sublime
To what degree do Jewish theology and Judaic forms of exegesis inform the work of twentieth-century philosophy and literary theory? In this book, Susan Handelman intelligently answers this question.
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Literary Criticism, Jewish Mysticism, Deconstruction, Literary Theory, and 15 moreWalter Benjamin, Émmanuel Lévinas, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Holocaust Studies, Modernism, Jewish Thought, Derridean Deconstruction, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Gershom Scholem, Jewish Cultural Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Paul de Man
This is a review of Nancy's book The Experience of Freedom, which examines how twentieth-century political powers have co-opted and manipulated concepts of freedom in service of tyrannical agendas. Nancy seeks to liberate freedom.
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George M. Johnson does a fine analysis of the vital role the Society for Psychical Research played in the making of modernist fiction. For those interested in psychology, theories of subjectivity, and conceptions of the unconscious, this... more
George M. Johnson does a fine analysis of the vital role the Society for Psychical Research played in the making of modernist fiction. For those interested in psychology, theories of subjectivity, and conceptions of the unconscious, this is essential reading. Johnson's analysis of individual texts is not as strong as his history of the Society for Psychical Research or his work on psychology more generally. But the book is very useful nonetheless.
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In the nineteenth century, there was a shift from taking the human as a given to seeing the human as a problem. Such is the major claim in this excellent study by Paul Sheehan. This idea led to a radical questioning of humanism, which... more
In the nineteenth century, there was a shift from taking the human as a given to seeing the human as a problem. Such is the major claim in this excellent study by Paul Sheehan. This idea led to a radical questioning of humanism, which prompted many prominent twentieth-century writers to develop anti-human, post-human, and inhuman philosophies. For those interested in intellectual history, this study is worth reading. Sheehan specifically discusses the works of Schopenhauer, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, D.H. Lawrence, Woolf, Conrad, and Beckett. One major limitation: Sheehan, like Heidegger, wrongly believes that Nietzsche considers the will an ontological fact of being. For Nietzsche, the will is just an invention, a provisional conceptual illusion that humans use to make sense of the interior world.
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Midrash is a rabbinical form of exegesis. By narrating stories that fill in the gaps within a sacred text, midrash illuminates puzzling passages and answers troubling questions. In this fine study, Terry R. Wright examines the degree to... more
Midrash is a rabbinical form of exegesis. By narrating stories that fill in the gaps within a sacred text, midrash illuminates puzzling passages and answers troubling questions. In this fine study, Terry R. Wright examines the degree to which modernist writers deployed midrashic techniques in order to engage and illuminate the Old and New Testaments. Wright uses this approach to analyze the works of Mark Twain, Thomas Mann, Anita Diamant, John Steinbeck, Jeanette Winterson, and Jenny Diski. The model that Wright establishes is very useful, though it doesn’t always work with particular authors. But when it does work, it is fascinating.
Research Interests: Modernism (Literature), New Testament, The Novel, Thomas Mann, Biblical Studies, and 9 moreTheory of the Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Mark Twain, Midrash, Modernism, Jeanette Winterson, John Steinbeck, Rabbinical literature (The Mishnah, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmudim, aggadic midrashim), and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Lawrence Jackson does a fine survey of African American writing from the 1930s through 1960. Particularly insightful is his discussion of Richard Wright, whose work set the stage for a massive critique of white liberals. Wright would... more
Lawrence Jackson does a fine survey of African American writing from the 1930s through 1960. Particularly insightful is his discussion of Richard Wright, whose work set the stage for a massive critique of white liberals. Wright would never have taken that critique as far as the Black Power intellectuals of the sixties did, but that's precisely why this book is so fascinating. It intelligently charts the evolution of ideas. Less convincing in this book are some of Jackson's claims about J. Saunders Redding. Despite this weakness, this is a solid book.
Research Interests: American Literature, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Literature, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 10 moreRace and Ethnicity, African American Literature, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Ralph Ellison, Twentieth Century Literature, African American History, African American Studies, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Richard Wright, and African-American Political Thought
George J. Stack wrote a very insightful and useful book clarifying the role the entanglements of science, anthropomorphism, and psychology played in the formation of Nietzsche's thinking. This is a solid book, definitely worth reading.
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When scholars have used philosophy to discuss Virginia Woolf's work, they have mainly used the work of Continental philosophers. Ann Banfield uses the analytic philosophy of Bertrand Russell to illuminate Woolf's writings. I don't... more
When scholars have used philosophy to discuss Virginia Woolf's work, they have mainly used the work of Continental philosophers. Ann Banfield uses the analytic philosophy of Bertrand Russell to illuminate Woolf's writings. I don't always agree with Banfield, but she has clearly written a brilliant book that is quite compelling. For those interested in Woolf and philosophical modernism, Banfield's book is a must read.
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Modern British writers were enthralled by Russian writers. In fact, Roberta Rubenstein argues that Russian writers played a crucial role in shaping British modernism. Rubenstein has written a very solid book.
Research Interests: British Literature, Russian Studies, Russian Literature, The Novel, The Historical Novel, and 12 moreLiterary Criticism, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Twentieth Century Literature, Modern British Literature, Leo Tolstoy, Bloomsbury Group, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Stream of Consciousness, and British Modernism
How has literary theory affected and shaped the contemporary novel? And how would Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, or Julia Kristeva look in a novel? Ryan does an excellent job examining novels that feature a theorist... more
How has literary theory affected and shaped the contemporary novel? And how would Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, or Julia Kristeva look in a novel? Ryan does an excellent job examining novels that feature a theorist as a character or explicitly engage a particular theory.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, The Novel, Poststructuralism, Literary Criticism, Continental Philosophy, and 12 moreLiterary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Jacques Lacan, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Roland Barthes, Postmodernism, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Contemporary Literature, and Poststructuralist Theory
The Moot was a group of famous and influential Christian intellectuals (including T.S. Eliot) who met in order to devise strategies to re-Christianize culture. They believed being direct about converting people would be difficult, so... more
The Moot was a group of famous and influential Christian intellectuals (including T.S. Eliot) who met in order to devise strategies to re-Christianize culture. They believed being direct about converting people would be difficult, so they discussed strategies (many were professors at prominent universities like Cambridge and Harvard) for indoctrinating students with a natural law Christian ideology. This book consists of the confidential minutes from the secret meetings as well as some of the position papers. It is fascinating to see how these famous writers tried to control the way segments of the population understood and experienced the world.
Research Interests: Christianity, Kant, Christian Education, History of Christianity, Natural Law, and 13 moreKarl Mannheim, Language and Ideology, Ideology, Totalitarianism, T.S. Eliot, Secularization, Politics of Secularism, Immanuel Kant, Secularisms and Secularities, Kant's Political Philosophy, Kant & neo-Kantianism, Secularism, and History of Christian Thought
This book features some useful essays underscoring the differences and similarities between continental and analytic philosophy.
Research Interests: Analytic Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and 11 moreMichel Foucault, Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell, History Of Modern Philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Existentialism, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, G E Moore, History of Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Empress Elisabeth and King Ludwig II struggled with mental illness, and they tried to understand and overcome their depression. Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a real person, and I examine a novella (Barred... more
Empress Elisabeth and King Ludwig II struggled with mental illness, and they tried to understand and overcome their depression. Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after a real person, and I examine a novella (Barred Window by Klaus Mann) and a film (Corsage by Marie Kreutzer) to illustrate how they fictionalize the lives of Elisabeth and Ludwig in order to offer ways of combatting mental illness and to offer healthier ways of thinking and doing. The theory I develop is based on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, who suggests that a moral conception of the human does considerable damage to mental health. According to Nietzsche, the human is primarily a being in search of power and control, and with a proper understanding of the primal condition of being human, it is possible to develop better and healthier psychological models.
Research Interests: Psychology, German Literature, History of Ideas, German History, Literature, and 14 moreMental Health, Literature and cinema, Sociology of Mental Health & Illness, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Cinema, Literary History, Life Writing (Literature), Mental Illness, Cinema Studies, Biography and Life-Writing, Austro-Hungarian History, Biofiction, and Autobiography and life writing studies
When scholars discuss the ethics of biofiction, they tend to focus primarily on the process of writing rather than reading. But our understanding of the ethics will differ significantly on the basis of the way readers approach... more
When scholars discuss the ethics of biofiction, they tend to focus primarily on the process of writing rather than reading. But our understanding of the ethics will differ significantly on the basis of the way readers approach biofictional texts. In this brief paper, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to educating readers in the art of reading biofiction.
Research Interests: Ethics, Modernism (Literature), Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, and 10 moreLiterary Modernism, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodern Literature, Teaching and Learning Writing and Reading, Postmodernity, Postmodern, Biofiction, Reading Instruction, and Virginia Woolf Studies
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form since the 1990s, resulting in spectacular publications from luminaries as varied as J.M. Coetzee, Margaret... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form since the 1990s, resulting in spectacular publications from luminaries as varied as J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Penelope Fitzgerald, Peter Carey, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Hilary Mantel. And yet, there is still considerable confusion about the aesthetic form. Take, for instance, the consistent claim that the biographical novel is a subgenre or a version of the historical novel. Scholars from the 1930s until the present have made this claim. But Colum McCann, who has authored three extraordinary biographical novels, says that he “hate[s] the historical novel” in two separate interviews, and he explains why in another. McCann is not alone. Prominent biographical novelists like Olga Tokarczuk, Daniel Kehlmann, Rosa Montero, Joanna Scott, Colm Tóibín, and Bruce Duffy, to mention only a notable few, unambiguously distance themselves from the historical novel. The question is why. In this interview, Michael Lackey, editor of two volumes of interviews with famous biographical novelists and author of The American Biographical Novel and Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction, will get some answers from McCann to pressing questions about biofiction.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish Literature, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, Israel/Palestine, and 15 moreLiterary Theory, Irish History, Contemporary Irish fiction, Contemporary Literature, British and Irish History, Israeli-Arab Relations, Historical Fiction, Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinian Studies, Contemporary Irish novel, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Biofiction, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Literary Theory Irish Studies, and History of Israel Palestine Conflict
The Enlightenment prioritized science, and this development contributed significantly to the making and the rise of historical fiction. Many scholars treat biofiction as a subgenre or version of historical fiction, but I argue that... more
The Enlightenment prioritized science, and this development contributed significantly to the making and the rise of historical fiction. Many scholars treat biofiction as a subgenre or version of historical fiction, but I argue that biofiction was a reaction against the scientific determinism on which the historical novel is premised. To make my case, I briefly examine Nietzsche's writings. His critique of history as a science mandated the rise of a new literary form like biofiction. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that form, and it qualifies as a biofiction. After providing a definition of biofiction as a genre focused on human agency, I then examine some texts that either foreground science or feature scientists as protagonists.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, The Historical Novel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Agency Theory, Feminism, and 14 moreContemporary British Literature, Literature And Science, Contemporary Literature, Genre Theory, Margaret Atwood, History and literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Literary Genres, Agency, Determinism, Georg Lukács, History and theory of literary genres, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Biofiction
This was a public lecture about St. Clair Drake that I delivered at the St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago on March 6, 2013
Research Interests: American History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, and 14 moreAfrican American Literature, Civil Rights, Ralph Ellison, Racism, African American Culture, African American History, African-American Literature, Civil Rights Movement, African American Studies, Black Power, Philosophy Of Race, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Chicago History, and African-American Political Thought
Hassan Najmi’s Gertrude (2014) is a biographical novel set in Morocco, France, and the United States. The contemporary Moroccan narrator tells the story of Gertrude Stein, who visited Morocco in the early twentieth century, and Muhammad,... more
Hassan Najmi’s Gertrude (2014) is a biographical novel set in Morocco, France, and the United States. The contemporary Moroccan narrator tells the story of Gertrude Stein, who visited Morocco in the early twentieth century, and Muhammad, a fictional character who lived with Stein in Paris for a short time. The actual Stein did visit Morocco, but while she initially acknowledged the impact the culture and place had on her life and art, she ultimately dismissed the experience. To visualize how Stein marginalized the Arab influence on her life and work, Najmi uses the Muhammad character as a symbol. Stein at first treats him with dignity and respect, but eventually, she relegates him to the inferior position of a subhuman servant before she ultimately banishes him. Stein’s treatment of the Arab stands in stark contrast to Henri Matisse, who is also a character in the novel. Like Stein, he visits Morocco, but he openly acknowledges for the remainder of his career how Arab culture and people inspired and enriched his art.
In this paper, I will clarify how Najmi uses the biographical novel to picture the way Arab culture and art powered and enriched modernist aesthetics, but also the way that impact was dismissed and suppressed, as with Stein, or acknowledged and celebrated, as with Matisse. What accounts for this difference? The answer lies in the implicit conception of what constitutes the human, and within this framework, place in its broad meaning is crucial. When in Morocco, Stein and Matisse place Arab culture and people on an equal footing with European and American culture and people. But when in France, Stein ultimately places an Arab low on the scale of human being, while Matisse places the Arab on the same level as Europeans. As I will show, Najmi strategically places his Arab protagonist in relation to famous modernist artists in order to expose which ones have implicitly adopted a view of the Arab as human or subhuman.
In this paper, I will clarify how Najmi uses the biographical novel to picture the way Arab culture and art powered and enriched modernist aesthetics, but also the way that impact was dismissed and suppressed, as with Stein, or acknowledged and celebrated, as with Matisse. What accounts for this difference? The answer lies in the implicit conception of what constitutes the human, and within this framework, place in its broad meaning is crucial. When in Morocco, Stein and Matisse place Arab culture and people on an equal footing with European and American culture and people. But when in France, Stein ultimately places an Arab low on the scale of human being, while Matisse places the Arab on the same level as Europeans. As I will show, Najmi strategically places his Arab protagonist in relation to famous modernist artists in order to expose which ones have implicitly adopted a view of the Arab as human or subhuman.
Research Interests: French Literature, Arabic Literature, Modernism (Literature), French Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and 15 moreMoroccan Studies, Literary Criticism, Gertrude Stein, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Morocco, Modernism (Art History), Contemporary Literature, Pablo Picasso, Gypsies & Travellers, Gypsies, Biofiction, Gypsy Studies, Henri Matisse, and Arabic Language and Literature
Biofiction is fiction, not biography. However, some scholars treat biofiction as if it were biography, and this has had disastrous consequences. To illustrate what biofiction actually is and does, I examine some contemporary biographical... more
Biofiction is fiction, not biography. However, some scholars treat biofiction as if it were biography, and this has had disastrous consequences. To illustrate what biofiction actually is and does, I examine some contemporary biographical novels by Virginia Woolf, Peter Carey, Joanna Scott, Irvin Yalom, and others.
Research Interests: Ethics, Australian Studies, Australia, Biography, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 14 moreVirginia Woolf, Anti-Semitism, Contemporary Literature, Baruch Spinoza, Australian History, William Faulkner, Modernist Literature, Australian Literature, Life Writing (Literature), Nazi Germany, Historical Fiction, Nazism, Biography and Life-Writing, and Biofiction
Given that biofiction names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, some have treated this form of literature as biography. But authors of biofiction use rather than represent the lives of actual people, so it is inaccurate to... more
Given that biofiction names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, some have treated this form of literature as biography. But authors of biofiction use rather than represent the lives of actual people, so it is inaccurate to treat biofiction as a form of biography. The papers in this panel will examine responsible and irresponsible usages of actual lives and they will clarify some of the aesthetic objectives of biographical novelists.
Research Interests: Spanish Literature, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Postmodernism, and 12 moreContemporary Literature, Historical Jesus, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Henry James, Life Writing (Literature), Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, Jesus, Jesus Christ, and Biofiction
As far as I can tell, Oscar Wilde was the first person to make a comment about biofiction. In this paper, I examine what led Wilde to think about biofiction, and I demonstrate that many contemporary authors of biofiction have adopted his... more
As far as I can tell, Oscar Wilde was the first person to make a comment about biofiction. In this paper, I examine what led Wilde to think about biofiction, and I demonstrate that many contemporary authors of biofiction have adopted his aesthetic approach, whether they know his work or not. I focus on William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, Colm Toibin's The Master, Colum McCann's TransAtlantic, and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Dream of the Celt.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Aesthetics, Irish Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Irish Politics, and 22 morePostmodernism, Irish History, Postcolonial Theory, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Oscar Wilde, British and Irish History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Frederick Douglass, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Henry James, Postmodern, Mario Vargas Llosa, Colm Toibin, Biofiction, Nat Turner, Irish Nationalism, William Styron, Roger Casement, and Colum McCann
Colm Tóibín's biographical novel The Master explores the inner life of Henry James--so it seems. But as I demonstrate, the biographical novel is less interested in representing the life of an actual historical figure than in using the... more
Colm Tóibín's biographical novel The Master explores the inner life of Henry James--so it seems. But as I demonstrate, the biographical novel is less interested in representing the life of an actual historical figure than in using the life of a biographical figure in order to project the author's own vision of life and the world. In this paper, I do an analysis of Tóibín's The Master. But, contrary to what scholars say, I argue that Oscar Wilde is the primary master of The Master.
Research Interests: Queer Studies, Victorian Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, Queer Theory, The Historical Novel, and 23 moreLiterary Criticism, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Victorian Literature, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Postmodernism, Homosexuality and Literature, Queer Theory (Literature), Victorian cultural studies, Postmodern Fiction, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary Literature, Neo-Victorian Literature, Oscar Wilde, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Henry James, Homosexuality, Colm Toibin, and Biofiction
Can Nazi children's books help us define the specific version of Christianity that enabled the Nazis to justify their anti-Semitic political agenda? I argue that they can. Included in this talk are some powerful images from Nazi... more
Can Nazi children's books help us define the specific version of Christianity that enabled the Nazis to justify their anti-Semitic political agenda? I argue that they can. Included in this talk are some powerful images from Nazi children's books as well as Nazi newspapers. These images best picture the version of Christianity that Hitler and the Nazis adopted.
Research Interests:
Biofiction has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why did it come into being and what is it uniquely capable of doing? Using the work of Walter Benjamin, I identify a couple major developments in intellectual history... more
Biofiction has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why did it come into being and what is it uniquely capable of doing? Using the work of Walter Benjamin, I identify a couple major developments in intellectual history that necessitated the rise and legitimization of biofiction. My claim is that the biographical novel is both realist and surrealist, and as such, it can better picture major historical collisions than the classical historical novel. I examine biographical novels about Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche to make my case. This paper is from the Modernist Studies Association conference in Pasadena 2016.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Surrealism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 18 moreHolocaust Studies, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Literature and Philosophy, Philosophy and Literature, Gershom Scholem, Holocaust Literature, Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Realism, Nazism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Nazi Propaganda, The Holocaust, Holocaust Shoah, and Biofiction
Virginia Woolf appears as a character in many contemporary biographical novels. Given that the novelists name their protagonist after an actual historical figure, many assume that the authors are trying to do biography, so they fault the... more
Virginia Woolf appears as a character in many contemporary biographical novels. Given that the novelists name their protagonist after an actual historical figure, many assume that the authors are trying to do biography, so they fault the novelists for altering facts about the subject's life. By doing a brief history and survey of contemporary biofiction, I explain why biographical novelists feel that they can take liberties with the facts about a person's life. I also clarify why Woolf could not imagine her way to biofiction. If anyone has questions or revision suggestions, please let me know.
Research Interests: Modernism (Literature), The Historical Novel, History of English Literature, Biography, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), and 18 moreVirginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Biographical Methods, Georg Lukacs, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Bloomsbury Group, Postmodern, Biography and Life-Writing, Biofiction, Virginia Woolf Studies, William Styron, and Robert Penn Warren
I organized a panel on the topic of biofiction for the MLA convention. I will give the first paper, which is about the rise and legitimization of the biographical novel. The paper is very short. It is intended to introduce the idea of... more
I organized a panel on the topic of biofiction for the MLA convention. I will give the first paper, which is about the rise and legitimization of the biographical novel. The paper is very short. It is intended to introduce the idea of biofiction to the audience, so that members of the audience can better appreciate the following papers from my co-panelists. If anybody has recommendations for expanding or clarifying the ideas, let me know.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, American Literature, History, Literature, The Novel, and 13 moreThe Historical Novel, Truth, Theory of the Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Virginia Woolf, Contemporary Literature, 20th Century American Literature, Theories Of Truth, History of the Novel, Joyce Carol Oates, Biofiction, 20th- and 21st-century literature in English, and Julia Alvarez
Ludwig Wittgenstein was Jewish, but he made some antisemitic remarks in his notebooks in the 1930s. Wittgenstein's antisemitism was formalized into a seemingly expert discourse about the Jews. In The World as I Found It, which is a... more
Ludwig Wittgenstein was Jewish, but he made some antisemitic remarks in his notebooks in the 1930s. Wittgenstein's antisemitism was formalized into a seemingly expert discourse about the Jews. In The World as I Found It, which is a biographical novel about Wittgenstein, Duffy creates the character of Max, who is an uneducated antisemite. But it is through Max's conversations with Wittgenstein that he finally internalizes a formal and comprehensive antisemitism. In this paper, which is a truncated version of a chapter that I'm currently writing, I clarify how Max symbolizes a dark, antisemitic undercurrent in Wittgenstein's philosophy.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Political Philosophy, Epistemology, Literary Criticism, and 11 moreAntisemitism (Prejudice), Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Holocaust Studies, Contemporary Literature, Antisemitism/Racisms, Nazi Germany, Antisemitism, Nazism, Biofiction, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is an abstract for a panel I organized on the topic of biographical fiction.
Research Interests: American Literature, Irish Studies, Modernism (Literature), Irish Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, and 14 moreThe Novel, Theory of the Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, Irish History, Georg Lukacs, Modernism, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Henry James, Herman Melville, Biographical Novel, Biofiction, Biographical Fiction, and Emma Donoghue
When supplying your reader with evidence to justify your claims, you will oftentimes quote from a text. But keep in mind that there are standard conventions for introducing quoted material, and for your convenience, I list a few of these... more
When supplying your reader with evidence to justify your claims, you will oftentimes quote from a text. But keep in mind that there are standard conventions for introducing quoted material, and for your convenience, I list a few of these strategies in this handout.
Research Interests:
This is an introduction to African American literature, which means that we will survey a wide variety of writings from prominent African American authors. In this course, we will focus on the way African American writers used the written... more
This is an introduction to African American literature, which means that we will survey a wide variety of writings from prominent African American authors. In this course, we will focus on the way African American writers used the written word to challenge the white racist (supremacist) interpretation of blacks, to forge their own identity, and to secure agency for themselves and their communities. We will also examine the texts within their historical and political contexts.
Research Interests:
Course Description and Objectives We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a... more
Course Description and Objectives We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a distinctively multicultural aesthetic.
Research Interests:
Science and scientists figure prominently in some excellent works of literature. In this 1000-level course, students will study literature about real and fictional scientists. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a literature... more
Science and scientists figure prominently in some excellent works of literature. In this 1000-level course, students will study literature about real and fictional scientists. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a literature course, which means that the emphasis is on the fiction rather than the science. What exactly does that mean? Authors of fiction note the significance of science and scientific discoveries, but they are more interested in symbolic and metaphorical meaning than they are in the actual science and discovery in themselves. In this course, we will examine how scientific discoveries impact literature, but also how literature can be used to scrutinize the ethical and political consequences of scientific discoveries as they function within culture and society.
Research Interests:
In this course, you will practice (and hopefully master) a variety of writing and critical reading and thinking skills required for successful work at the college level. Specifically, you will be asked to complete three major writing... more
In this course, you will practice (and hopefully master) a variety of writing and critical reading and thinking skills required for successful work at the college level. Specifically, you will be asked to complete three major writing assignments and numerous shorter writing and reading assignments. You will also be required to conduct research for a few of your assignments, since research forms an essential part of all academic work.
Research Interests:
From Shakespeare to the present, mental illness has figured prominently in literature. In this course, students will read texts and watch films in which authors and directors dramatize people struggling to come to terms with depression,... more
From Shakespeare to the present, mental illness has figured prominently in literature. In this course, students will read texts and watch films in which authors and directors dramatize people struggling to come to terms with depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness. Central to the course are unsettling questions. Is mental illness primarily caused by environmental factors, something like patriarchal oppression? Or, is it primarily the consequence of chemical imbalances in the brain? Is it possible that seeming cures by accredited authorities not only fail to foster improvement but also exacerbate the problem? We will examine a wide variety of works of literature and film that struggle to make sense of mental illness in variant forms.
Research Interests:
The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so... more
The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so popular that it was no longer possible to ignore or disregard it. In this seminar, students will specifically read biographical novels from the nineteenth century until the present.
Research Interests:
Course Description and Objectives We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a... more
Course Description and Objectives We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a distinctively multicultural aesthetic. There will be six quizzes (only five will count), two essays (one short and one long), and two exams.
Research Interests:
If African Americans struggled to achieve equality and recognition in the racist United States, the situation was even more difficult for African American women, who had to contend with sexism in both the white and black communities. In... more
If African Americans struggled to achieve equality and recognition in the racist United States, the situation was even more difficult for African American women, who had to contend with sexism in both the white and black communities. In this course, we will examine the writings of prominent African American women. There will be quizzes, two essays, and two exams.
Research Interests:
Considered one of the most original thinkers of all time, Friedrich Nietzsche changed the course of intellectual, philosophical, and literary history. So fascinating and complicated were Nietzsche’s theories regarding the death of God,... more
Considered one of the most original thinkers of all time, Friedrich Nietzsche changed the course of intellectual, philosophical, and literary history. So fascinating and complicated were Nietzsche’s theories regarding the death of God, the genealogical formation of ‘truth,’ and the will to power that prominent novelists have given Nietzsche and/or his ideas a central place in their literary works. In this interdisciplinary course, we will read some books by and novels about Nietzsche in order to discover who this remarkable man was. Authors to be discussed: Plato, Nietzsche, Lou-Andreas Salome, Richard Wright, Lance Olsen, Milan Kundera, and Irvin D. Yalom.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, African American Philosophy, Political Theory, Literary Criticism, Continental Philosophy, and 11 moreFriedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism, Nietzsche, Literary History, Postmodern Literature, Milan Kundera, History of Literary Criticism, Existentialism, Richard Wright, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, and African-American Political Thought
Students have asked me to make this sheet about writing academic paragraphs available. If you want to use this instruction sheet in your classes, you have permission. You do not need to contact me for permission. Central to work at the... more
Students have asked me to make this sheet about writing academic paragraphs available. If you want to use this instruction sheet in your classes, you have permission. You do not need to contact me for permission.
Central to work at the university is the empirical method, which is the art of using credible evidence to clarify and justify claims you make. This paragraph assignment has been designed to train students in the art of using the empirical method for defending and supporting claims about a literary work. What I ask you to do in this paragraph is something you should do regularly in your writing and thinking about literature. For your benefit, I have identified five essential parts of the academic paragraph. Topic sentence: This sentence should make a point that is not obvious and that needs support, or evidence, to be convincing.
Central to work at the university is the empirical method, which is the art of using credible evidence to clarify and justify claims you make. This paragraph assignment has been designed to train students in the art of using the empirical method for defending and supporting claims about a literary work. What I ask you to do in this paragraph is something you should do regularly in your writing and thinking about literature. For your benefit, I have identified five essential parts of the academic paragraph. Topic sentence: This sentence should make a point that is not obvious and that needs support, or evidence, to be convincing.
Research Interests:
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and... more
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and thematic concerns. There will be six quizzes (only five will count), four paragraph assignments, and three exams. Course Requirements: Quizzes 20 (six quizzes, each worth four points. Only five will count.) Exam #1 20 Exam #2 20 Exam #3 20 Paragraph assignments 20 (four paragraphs, each worth five points) Grading Scale: 100-94=A, 93-90=A-, 89-87=B+, 86-84=B, 83-80=B-, … Course Goals: Successfully completing this course means sufficiently mastering the following skills (they appear in no particular order): *critical and close reading *analysis (textual and otherwise) *writing with clarity *clear and logical organization on all levels *thesis development *effective use of a variety of evidence types *development of logical arguments *audience analysis *polished writing free of basic grammatical errors *an understanding of what constitutes plagiarism
Research Interests: American Literature, Emily Dickinson, African American Literature, Literary Theory, T.S. Eliot, and 9 moreMark Twain, African American Studies, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Modernism, Literary History, William Faulkner, Harlem Renaissance, and Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. Because the main character is named after a real person, some people wrongly assume that... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. Because the main character is named after a real person, some people wrongly assume that biofiction is a form of biography, an attempt to accurately represent the life of a person from the past. But this is not correct. Biofiction is fiction, not biography, and as such, authors find something of value in the story of their subject, and then they fictionalize that story in order to make sense of life more generally. In other words, authors frequently take fictional liberties with the historical and biographical facts in order to give readers their own visions of life and the world. What is it in the lives of Frederick and Anna Douglass, Serena Williams, Galileo, or Friedrich Nietzsche that is so relevant and meaningful for us today? That is the kind of question we will answer through fictions and films about important historical figures. In this course we will specifically examine social justice biofiction, which is literature that fictionalizes the life of an actual person in order to promote and advance justice for people and groups that have been marginalized and oppressed. There has been very little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel, so this is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester. Students will write two papers and take two exams.
Research Interests: The Historical Novel, Social Justice, African American Literature, Friedrich Nietzsche, Social Justice in Education, and 15 moreAfrican American Studies, Contemporary American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Social Justice Issues, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Social Justice Education, Literary History, History of Literary Criticism, Feminism and Social Justice, Arab-Israeli conflict, History and theory of literary genres, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Biofiction, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Human Rights and Social Justice
This is an introduction to African American literature, which means that we will survey a wide variety of writings from prominent African American authors. In this course, we will focus on the way African American writers used the written... more
This is an introduction to African American literature, which means that we will survey a wide variety of writings from prominent African American authors. In this course, we will focus on the way African American writers used the written word to challenge the white racist (supremacist) interpretation of blacks, to forge their own identity, and to secure agency for themselves and their communities. We will also examine the texts within their historical and political contexts. Students will take six pop quizzes (only five will count), write two papers, and do two exams. Pop quizzes will be given at the beginning of class. If you are absent or late, you cannot make up a quiz.
Research Interests:
In this course, you will practice (and hopefully master) a variety of writing and critical reading and thinking skills required for successful work at the college level. Specifically, you will be asked to complete three major writing... more
In this course, you will practice (and hopefully master) a variety of writing and critical reading and thinking skills required for successful work at the college level. Specifically, you will be asked to complete three major writing assignments and numerous shorter writing and reading assignments. You will also be required to conduct research for a few of your assignments, since research forms an essential part of all academic work.
Research Interests:
The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so... more
The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so popular that it was no longer possible to ignore or disregard it. In this seminar, students will specifically read biographical novels from the nineteenth century until the present.
There has been little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel. This is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester.
There has been little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel. This is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester.
Research Interests: Nineteenth Century Studies, German Idealism, German Romanticism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Galileo Galilei, and 12 moreVirginia Woolf, Postmodernism, German Literature and Culture, Bertolt Brecht, 19th-century German philosophy, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Egon Schiele, Novalis, Biofiction, Virginia Woolf Studies, and alexander von Humboldt
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and... more
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and thematic concerns. There will be six quizzes (only five will count), four paragraph assignments, and three exams.
Research Interests: American Literature, Emily Dickinson, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), T.S. Eliot, Postmodernism, and 10 moreMark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Modernism, Postmodernism (Literature), Harlem Renaissance, Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance Literature, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
If African Americans struggled to achieve equality and recognition in the racist United States, the situation was even more difficult for African American women, who had to contend with sexism in both the white and black communities. In... more
If African Americans struggled to achieve equality and recognition in the racist United States, the situation was even more difficult for African American women, who had to contend with sexism in both the white and black communities. In this course, we will examine the writings of prominent African American women. There will be two essays and two exams.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Feminist Theory, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, African American Literature, Feminism, African American History, African American Studies, Contemporary Literature, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Postmodern Literature, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison (Literature), Feminism and Social Justice, Alice Walker, and African-American Political Thought
Science and scientists figure prominently in some excellent works of literature. In this 1000-level course, students will study literature about real and fictional scientists. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a literature... more
Science and scientists figure prominently in some excellent works of literature. In this 1000-level course, students will study literature about real and fictional scientists. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a literature course, which means that the emphasis is on the fiction rather than the science. What exactly does that mean? Authors of fiction note the significance of science and scientific discoveries, but they are more interested in symbolic and metaphorical meaning than they are in the actual science and discovery in themselves. In this course, we will examine how scientific discoveries impact literature, but also how literature can be used to scrutinize the ethical and political consequences of scientific discoveries as they function within culture and society.
Research Interests: Transgender Studies, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Aldous Huxley, Galileo Galilei, John Banville, and 15 moreTheories of Gender and Transgender, Literature And Science, Bertolt Brecht, Transgender, Gay and Lesbian History, Frankenstein, Copernicus, Alan Turing, Transsexuality and Transgender, Charles Darwin, Biofiction, Marie Curie, A.S. Byatt, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, and Frankenstein Mary Shelley
This is an assignment I do with my first-year and sophomore students. Some of my students who have become grade school and high school teachers have emailed me, asking for this assignment so that they can use it in their classrooms.... more
This is an assignment I do with my first-year and sophomore students. Some of my students who have become grade school and high school teachers have emailed me, asking for this assignment so that they can use it in their classrooms. Everyone and anyone has my permission to use this assignment with their students.
In academic writing, professors expect certain things, such as a clearly defined topic sentence, evidence to support the topic sentence claim, and analysis to clarify how the evidence supports the claim. Here is a description of the essential components of a paragraph for writing in my class.
In academic writing, professors expect certain things, such as a clearly defined topic sentence, evidence to support the topic sentence claim, and analysis to clarify how the evidence supports the claim. Here is a description of the essential components of a paragraph for writing in my class.
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Course Description Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. In this course we will examine social justice biofiction, which is... more
Course Description Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. In this course we will examine social justice biofiction, which is literature that uses the life of an actual person in order to promote and advance justice for people and groups that have been marginalized and oppressed. There has been very little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel, so this is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester. Students will write two papers and do one class presentation.
Research Interests: Aesthetics, Literary Criticism, Social Justice, Literary Theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 15 moreSocial Justice in Education, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary Literature, Social Justice Issues, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Social Justice Education, Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, Zora Neale Hurston, Feminism and Social Justice, Moses, Biofiction, Law and Social Justice, Human Rights and Social Justice, Global Social Justice and Education, and Social Justice Issues In Adult and Higher Education
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. In this course we will examine social justice biofiction, which is literature that uses the... more
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form in recent years. In this course we will examine social justice biofiction, which is literature that uses the life of an actual person in order to promote and advance justice for people and groups that have been marginalized and oppressed. There has been very little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel, so this is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester. Students will write two papers and take two exams.
Research Interests: Social Justice, Social Justice in Education, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Social Justice Education, Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, and 3 moreFeminism and Social Justice, Human Rights and Social Justice, and Social Justice Issues In Adult and Higher Education
This is the syllabus for my Introduction to African American Literature course (fall 2019)
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Course Description: During the 1920s there was a major aesthetic outpouring in the African American community which resulted in the birth of jazz; the poetry of Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Countee Cullen; the novels of Claude... more
Course Description: During the 1920s there was a major aesthetic outpouring in the African American community which resulted in the birth of jazz; the poetry of Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Countee Cullen; the novels of Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston; and the essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Charles S. Johnson. In this course, we will listen to jazz and read poetry, novels and essays from prominent Harlem Renaissance writers.
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Course Description and Objectives: We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a... more
Course Description and Objectives: We will read, analyze, and interpret multicultural literature. Our objectives are to understand the degree to which ethnicity and race play a role in the formation of a national identity and to define a distinctively multicultural aesthetic. There will be two essays (one short and one long), and two exams.
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Course Description and Objectives In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements,... more
Course Description and Objectives
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and thematic concerns. There will be six quizzes (only five will count), four paragraph assignments, and two exams.
In this course, we will examine the works of prominent American writers from the Civil War to the present. Students will be expected to understand the works of individual writers, literary movements, intellectual developments, and thematic concerns. There will be six quizzes (only five will count), four paragraph assignments, and two exams.
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As an Intellectual Community (IC) General Education course, this first-year experience is designed to provide a small-class environment in which students participate in and learn about the conventions of an intellectual community, as well... more
As an Intellectual Community (IC) General Education course, this first-year experience is designed to provide a small-class environment in which students participate in and learn about the conventions of an intellectual community, as well as work closely with the faculty member and fellow students. In this particular IC section, students will focus on the difficulties and complexities of committing oneself to the cause of social justice. Most of us agree that discriminatory laws against women and blacks were unjust. So social justice movements on behalf of those groups are now seen as something positive. But there have been some social-justice movements that are now considered profoundly unjust. Take the issue of compulsory sterilization. Many believed that mentally challenged people as well as compulsive criminals should not be able to have children, so there was a movement to have them sterilized. We now find those efforts unseemly. In this course, we will examine the role literature and film play in advancing social-justice causes. To that end, we will read four novels (Frankenstein, The Color Purple, Maurice, and The Danish Girl and view a number content-related films. The course will incorporate discussion (about the novels and the films) and address skills essential to academic success (research, collaboration with peers, analytical writing, etc.). Requirements include quizzes; in-class participation; paragraph assignments; two exams; an individual presentation; and a group project.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Transgender Studies, Social Justice, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Social Justice in Education, and 14 moreBlack feminism, Social Justice Issues, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Social Justice Education, Black Women's Studies, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, Transgender, Frankenstein, Feminism and Social Justice, Alice Walker, Human Rights and Social Justice, Social Justice Issues In Adult and Higher Education, and Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Course Description: The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it... more
Course Description: The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so popular that it was no longer possible to ignore or disregard it. In this seminar, students will specifically read biographical novels from the 1930s through the present. There has been very little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel. This is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Emily Dickinson, Gay And Lesbian Studies, and 18 moreIrish Politics, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Irish History, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Literature, British and Irish History, Postmodern Literature, Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, Mario Vargas Llosa, Moses, Biofiction, Nat Turner, Irish Nationalism, William Styron, Roger Casement, and Postcolonialism
In this course, we will use literature and film to understand the complex interactions between Nazi perpetrators and Jewish victims. The goal is to enter the historical nightmare we have come to know as the Holocaust. Important to note is... more
In this course, we will use literature and film to understand the complex interactions between Nazi perpetrators and Jewish victims. The goal is to enter the historical nightmare we have come to know as the Holocaust. Important to note is that my approach to the Holocaust is interdisciplinary as well as intertextual. History and literature are equally valuable in illuminating the reality of Nazi Germany and the death camps, so students will be expected to have a commanding grasp of historical events as well as literary texts. Additionally, students will be expected to read works intertextually—Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved presupposes an understanding of Jean Amery's At the Mind's Limit. Put simply, students will be asked to clarify how texts are in conversation with each other.
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This is the syllabus for my honors course, In Search of Nietzsche. We read a number of works by Nietzsche, but then we also read novels in which Nietzsche is the main character or in which his thought takes center stage.
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This is the syllabus for my course The American Biographical Novel. Students will read a number of biographical novels and clarify what is distinctive about this genre of fiction.
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There have been two volumes of interviews with prominent biofictionalists, and while they have proven to be immensely valuable to scholars, they are limited in that they focus primarily on writers from English-speaking countries. In... more
There have been two volumes of interviews with prominent biofictionalists, and while they have proven to be immensely valuable to scholars, they are limited in that they focus primarily on writers from English-speaking countries. In short, there is a need for a volume of interviews with famous biofictionalists who write in a language other than English. To address this need, we are soliciting interviews with famous biofictionalists from 20 to 25 countries. Those interviews should be conducted in the author’s native language but then translated into English. The interviews should be between 5000 and 7500 words. They are due by August 15, 2025. All submissions should be sent to Michael Lackey (lacke010@morris.umn.edu). Attached is a CFI (call for interviews), which will give you more specific information about the project.
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Biofiction Listserv Biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual biographical figure, has become a dominant literary form in recent years., to name only a notable few, authored important biographical novels that... more
Biofiction Listserv Biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual biographical figure, has become a dominant literary form in recent years., to name only a notable few, authored important biographical novels that garnered much critical acclaim. But the scholarship about biofiction is only recently starting to gain traction. To promote scholarly work about biofiction, there is a listserv with the following objectives: 1) to organize conference panels on the topic of biofiction, 2) to announce new publications about biofiction, 3) to issue CFPs about biofiction to the most suitable scholars, 4) to encourage and engage in conversations about biofiction, 5) and to share strategies for teaching biofiction. To subscribe to the biofiction listserv, send a message to Michael Lackey (lacke010@morris.umn.edu) with Biofiction in the subject line. You will then be added to the listserve.
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For the last three years I have been working on my current book project, which is titled Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction. I am nearly finished with a full draft, and I just completed my introduction. If any of you have time... more
For the last three years I have been working on my current book project, which is titled Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction. I am nearly finished with a full draft, and I just completed my introduction. If any of you have time to read it, and it is short, here is what I would like to know. One, is the introduction clear? In other words, based on the introduction, do you get a clear sense of what I intend to argue in the book? Second, does it make you want to read the book? Put differently, does it sound like the book would be worth reading? I will be immensely grateful for any feedback.
Research Interests: Irish Studies, Irish Literature, Postcolonial Studies, The Historical Novel, Literary Criticism, and 15 moreLiterary Theory, Postmodernism, Irish History, Contemporary Literature, Oscar Wilde, Historiographic Metafiction, British and Irish History, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Ireland, Life Writing (Literature), Literary studies, Biography and Life-Writing, and Irish Nationalism
This is the introduction to my book of interviews with biographical novelists from across the globe. Unlike Truthful Fictions, which contained only my interviews, many other scholars interviewed prominent biographical novelists for this... more
This is the introduction to my book of interviews with biographical novelists from across the globe. Unlike Truthful Fictions, which contained only my interviews, many other scholars interviewed prominent biographical novelists for this book. My plan is to submit the book to my editor by early February. If you spot any errors or have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know. I still need to write a conclusion. For your benefit, here is the table of contents:
Conversations with Biographical Novelists:
Truthful Fictions across the Globe
Edited by Michael Lackey
Table of Contents
Kevin Barry, interviewed by Stuart Kane: Positive Contamination in the Biographical Novel
Laurent Binet, interviewed by Monica Latham: Reflections on Truth, Veracity, Fictionalization, and Falsification
Javier Cercas, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Resisting the “dictatorship of the present” in the Biographical Novel
Barbara Chase-Riboud, interviewed by Melanie Masterton Sherazi: Sally Hemings’ Staircase: On Biofiction’s Afterlives
Emma Donoghue, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Voicing the Nobodies in the Biographical Novel
David Ebershoff, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novel as Life Art
Hannah Kent, interviewed by Kelly Gardiner: Fictions of Women
David Lodge, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Bionovel as a Hybrid Genre
Colum McCann, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Contested Realities in the Biographical Novel
Anchee Min, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novelist as Cultural Diagnostician
Rosa Montero, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Speculative Subjectivities and the Biofictional Surge
Stephanus Muller, interviewed by Willemien Froneman: Stitching up the Auto/Biographical Seam
Sabina Murray, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Complex Psychologies in the Biographical Novel
Nuala O’Connor, interviewed by Julie A. Eckerle: The Slant Truth of the Biographical Novel
Susan Sellers, interviewed by Bethany Layne: Postmodernism and the Biographical Novel
Colm Tóibín, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Anchored Imagination of the Biographical Novel
Olga Tokarczuk, interviewed by Robert Kusek and Wojciech Szymański: I Believe in the Novel
Chika Unigwe, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Biographical Fiction and the Creation of Possible Lives
Conversations with Biographical Novelists:
Truthful Fictions across the Globe
Edited by Michael Lackey
Table of Contents
Kevin Barry, interviewed by Stuart Kane: Positive Contamination in the Biographical Novel
Laurent Binet, interviewed by Monica Latham: Reflections on Truth, Veracity, Fictionalization, and Falsification
Javier Cercas, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Resisting the “dictatorship of the present” in the Biographical Novel
Barbara Chase-Riboud, interviewed by Melanie Masterton Sherazi: Sally Hemings’ Staircase: On Biofiction’s Afterlives
Emma Donoghue, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Voicing the Nobodies in the Biographical Novel
David Ebershoff, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novel as Life Art
Hannah Kent, interviewed by Kelly Gardiner: Fictions of Women
David Lodge, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Bionovel as a Hybrid Genre
Colum McCann, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Contested Realities in the Biographical Novel
Anchee Min, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novelist as Cultural Diagnostician
Rosa Montero, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Speculative Subjectivities and the Biofictional Surge
Stephanus Muller, interviewed by Willemien Froneman: Stitching up the Auto/Biographical Seam
Sabina Murray, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Complex Psychologies in the Biographical Novel
Nuala O’Connor, interviewed by Julie A. Eckerle: The Slant Truth of the Biographical Novel
Susan Sellers, interviewed by Bethany Layne: Postmodernism and the Biographical Novel
Colm Tóibín, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Anchored Imagination of the Biographical Novel
Olga Tokarczuk, interviewed by Robert Kusek and Wojciech Szymański: I Believe in the Novel
Chika Unigwe, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Biographical Fiction and the Creation of Possible Lives