The only course I’ve ever really taught more than once: how to read poetry and fiction. Continue reading →

What exactly “Virginia Woolf” means was one of the subjects of the course. Our method for finding out was to read lots of texts written by Virginia Woolf, and one text titled Virginia Woolf. Continue reading →

A course on narratives, narratology, and narrative theory, including fiction (Proust, Pessoa), film, and new media. Continue reading →

On the historical influence in literary criticism and theory of two of the major post-structuralist thinkers of the twentieth century. Continue reading →

A graduate course that made its way through modernism’s literary and literary critical greatest hits so as to give a broad introduction to the historical and intellectual shape of the period. Continue reading →

I co-taught this class with my friend Charlie; probably the most fun I’ve ever had teaching. Continue reading →

Writing in the introduction to her 1990 anthology, The Gender of Modernism, Bonnie Kime Scott recalls that modernism “as we were taught it at mid-century was perhaps halfway to truth. It was unconsciously gendered masculine…. Much of what … men had to say about the crisis in gender identification that underlies much of modernist literature was left out or read from a limited perspective.” If, as Scott argues, a general crisis of gender identification underlies modernist literature, then any discussion on gender and modernism (or women in it) ought to have implications for a broader definition of modernism itself. This course aims to sketch the outlines of such a definition. Continue reading →