Positions Held

2014-                 Director of the Center for Humanities and Information, Penn State
2012-                 Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, Penn State
Fall 2015            Visiting Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania
2014-2015          Department Head, Comparative Literature, Penn State
2013-2014          Associate Fellow, Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg
Spring 2013        Visiting Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
2010-2012          Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, Penn State
2010-2012          Co-Director, Confucius Institute, Penn State
2008-2012          Director, Asian Studies Program, Penn State
2007-2010          Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, Penn State
2005-2007          Global Fellow, UCLA International Institute
2005-2007          Associate Professor of English, U of Arizona
2001-2005          Assistant Professor of English, U of Arizona
2000-2001          Assistant Professor of French and Humanities, U of Northern Iowa
1999-2000          Lecturer, Department of English, Auburn University
Spring 1998        Visiting Lecturer, Beijing Foreign Studies University

Education

1999                   Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature. U of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
1994                   M.A., English. Georgetown University
1993                   B.A., English. Georgetown University

Languages: French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, German

Publications

Monographs
2021      Humanist Reason: A History. An Argument. A Plan. (Columbia UP)
2014      The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (Columbia UP; translated into Chinese for Xinhua Press, 2018)
2012      On Literary Worlds (Oxford UP; paperback 2015)
2009      The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain (Oxford UP; translated into Chinese for Jiangsu People’s Press, by Yuan Jian, 2013) | Winner of the 2010 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize
2004      Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel quel (U of Michigan P; paperback 2011)

Edited Books and Translations
2021      Information: A Reader, edited with Anatoly Detwyler and Lea Pao (Columbia)
2018      What is Information? by Peter Janich, translated with Lea Pao (Minnesota)
2016      A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism, edited with Rebecca Walkowitz (Columbia)
2007      Sinographies: Writing China, edited with Haun Saussy and Steven Yao (Minnesota)

Other Editing
Ongoing                Global Asias. Co-editor, book series with Oxford University Press.

2024      Special section of symplokē 32.1-2 on “The Ethics of Close Reading?” with Jane Gallop, Ellen McCallum, and Gary Weissman.
2013-16 ACLA Report on the State of the Discipline, Editorial Team
2012-15 Verge: Studies in Global Asias (journal), Senior Editor, with Tina Chen.
2013      Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Associate Editor. General Editor Stephen Ross.
2011      “Asia and World Literature.” Special issue of Comparative Literature Studies.
2009      “EverQuest: 10 Years Later” Edited with Edward Wesp. Special issue of Game Studies.
2006      “Modernisms’ Chinas.” Special issue of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.
2005      “Responding to Death of a Discipline: An ACLA Forum.” Edited with Christopher Bush. Special issue of Comparative Literature.

Journal Articles
2024      “Close Reading Needs a Better Theory of Actuality.” symplokē 32.1-2: 363-68.
2024      “Yes Coincidence.” Journal of Social and Cultural Possibilities 1:1
2024      “Only Persons Intend.” Poetics Today 45.2: 275-281.
2023      “Take My Breath Away.” SubStance 52.1: 127-132.
2023      “Humanist Unreason.” The Comparatist 47: 106-110.
2019      “Literary History after Literary Dominance.” Modern Language Quarterly 80.4.
2017      “What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?” New Literary History 48.3.
2016      “Against Historicist Fundamentalism.” PMLA 131.5 (Oct 2016): 1414-22.
2014      “Academic Writing, I Love You. Really, I Do.” Critical Inquiry 41.1 (Autumn): 53-77.
2014      “On the Lack of Curiosity Regarding Institutional Life (ACLA Presidential Address).” Comparative Literature 66.4: 481-88.
2013      “I Too Have Dreamed of Another French Messiah.” English Language Notes 51.2: 87-94.
2012      “Cosmologies, Globalization, and Their Humans.” Social Text 29.4: 81-105.
2011      “Against Periodization; or, On Institutional Time.” New Literary History 42.4: 739-756.
2011      “On Literary Worlds.” Modern Language Quarterly 72.2: 129-161.
2009      “The Asian Turns.” PMLA 124.3: 906-917.
2009      “Towards a Critical Aesthetic of Virtual World Geographies,” with Edward Wesp. Game Studies 9.1.
2007      “Chinese Bodies, Chinese Futures.” Representations 99.1: 99-129.
2006      “Immigrating Fictions: Unfailing Mediation in Dictée and Becoming Madame Mao.” Contemporary Literature 47.4: 601-635.. Also in Immigrant Fictions: Contemporary Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. Rebecca L. Walkowitz (Wisconsin, 2007).
2006      “Bertrand Russell’s Chinese Eyes.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18.1: 120-154. Revised and published in Pacific Rim Modernisms, ed. Helen Sword and Steven G. Yao (Toronto, 2009).
2005      “I/O: A Comparative Literature for a Digital Age.” Comparative Literature 57.3: 219-226.
2005      “The Strange Case of Araki Yasusada: Author, Object:” PMLA 120.1: 66-81. Reprinted in Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays on the Poetry of Araki Yasusada, ed. William Freind (Shearsman Books, 2011).
2004      “Style: Strategy and Mimesis in Ergodic Literature,” with Edward Wesp. Comparative Literature Studies 41.3: 404-423.
2004      “Reading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communities,” with Edward Wesp. Postmodern Culture 14.2.
1999      “Critical Dreams: Orientalism, Modernism, and the Meaning of Pound’s China.” Twentieth Century Literature 45:4: 511-33.
1995      “Imagine That: Rodney King and the L.A. Riots.” Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group : 5-17.

Book chapters

2021      “Does Poetry Make Worlds?” The Cambridge History of World Literature, ed. Debjani Ganguly (Cambridge UP), 201-214.
2019      “The Emergence of Modernity.” A Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie (Wiley/Blackwell), 1-6.
2019      “World Literature: A Critique.” Vergleichende Weltliteraturen/Comparative World Literatures, ed. Dieter Lamping and Galin Tihanov (J.B. Metzler).
2018      “Translators’ Introduction,” with Lea Pao. Peter Janich, What is Information? (Minnesota), ix-xii.
2017      “Then and Now.” Rethinking Critique, ed. Elizabeth Anker and Rita Felski (Duke), 279-95.
2017      “Institutional Inertia and the State of the Discipline.” Futures of Comparative Literature (the ACLA Report), ed. Ursula Heise et al. (Routledge), 11-16.
2016      “Introduction,” with Rebecca Walkowitz. A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism, ed. Hayot and Walkowitz (Columbia), 1-10.
2016      “History and its Alternatives: War Games as Social Form.” Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia, ed. Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada (Hawai’i), 252-280.
2015      “Foreword.” Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics, ed. Ilya Kliger and Boris Maslov (Fordham).
2014      “Coolie.” The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, ed. Rachel Lee (Routledge), 81-90.
2012      “Chinese Modernism, Mimetic Desire, and European Time.” The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, ed. Mark Wollaeger (Oxford), 149-170.
2011      “World Literature and Globalization.” The Routledge Companion to World Literature, ed. David Damrosch, Theo D’Haen, and Djelal Kadir (Routledge), 223-31.
2011      “Vanishing Horizons: Problems in the Comparison of China and the West.” A Companion to Comparative Literature, ed. Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas (Wiley-Blackwell), 88-107.
2011      “Solomon’s Bluff: Virtual Property and the Aesthetics of Modern Worldmaking,” with Edward Wesp. Modernism and Copyright, ed. Paul Saint-Amour (Oxford), 302-323.
2010      “On the Sainifeng 赛呢风 as a Global Literary Practice.” Global Chinese Literature, ed. Jing Tsu and David Wang (Brill), 219-228.
2007      “Chineseness: A Prehistory of Its Future.” Sinographies: Writing China (Minnesota), ed. Hayot, Saussy, and Yao, 3-33.
2007      “Sinographies: An Introduction,” with Haun Saussy and Steven G. Yao. Sinographies: Writing China, vi-xxi.

Public-Facing Projects

2024      Humanities Seed Bank (humanitiesseedbank.substack.com). With Carla Nappi.

              Short video interviews with major scholars from across literary, philosophical, and historical disciplines, asking them to describe an idea worth preserving beyond the apocalypse. Launch in December 2022 with 20-30 videos, more videos added monthly until we get tired.

2021      HumanitiesWorks (www.humanitiesworks.org). With Aaron Hanlon and Anna Kornbluh.

              A series of posters and other printable material designed to combat myths about the relation between majoring in the humanities and future employment.

Short pieces, interviews, reviews, podcasts

forthcoming

              Interview with Lidan Lin, in China-US Journal of Humanities

2023      Review of Joseph Storm’s Metamodernism, for American Literary History
2023      On Experimental Writing, in ASAP Journal (https://asapjournal.com/experimental-criticism-12-questionnaire-answers-eric-hayot/)
2023      Responses to responses to Humanist Reason, for The Tautegory Project (https://tautegory.org/322-2/)
2021      “The Humanities Have a Marketing Problem.” The Chronicle of Higher Education.
2021      Podcast. New Books Network, with Bryan Scott, on Humanist Reason.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/humanist-reason-a-history-an-argument-a-plan
2021      Podcast, New Books Network, with Claire Clark, on Humanist Reason
https://newbooksnetwork.com/humanist-reason
2020      “What is the Time of Literature?” American Literary History 32.1: 201-08. Reprinted in Annual Anthology of International Comparative Literature (Cambridge Scholars, 2021).
2019      “Worldedness.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Jeffrey Di Leo.
2018      “The Humanities as We Know Them Are Doomed: Now What?” The Chronicle of Higher Education.
2018      “The Sky is Falling.” Profession.
2017      “The Profession Does Not Need the Monograph Dissertation.” Profession.
2015      “Introducing Verge: What Does it Mean to Study Global Asias?” with Tina Chen. Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1.1: vi-xv.
2015      “Rethinking Graduate Programs.” ACLA Report on the State of the Discipline.
2015      “Of Clocks and Clouds: The Fiction of David Mitchell.” Public Books.
2015      Review of Can Xue’s The Last Lover. Times Literary Supplement Jan 23 2015.
2015      “Four Thoughts for Academic Writers.” Columbia University Press Blog.
2014      “On worldedness, literature, and culture: a conversation with Eric Hayot.” Interview by Dorothea Fischer-Hornung. Atlantic Studies 11.2 (2014): 160-74.
2014      Podcast. New Books Network, with Carla Nappi, on The Elements of Academic Style.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/eric-hayot-the-elements-of-academic-style-writing-for-the-humanities-columbia-university-press-2014-2
2014      “Rough Notes for What is Data?” Arcade.
2013      “Through the Mirror: Lévi-Strauss in Japan.” LA Review of Books.
2013      Podcast. New Books Network, with Carla Nappi, on On Literary Worlds.
 https://newbooksnetwork.com/eric-hayot-on-literary-worlds-oxford-up-2012
2013      “China, Middlebrow to Highbrow.” Public Books.
2011      “A Hundred Flowers.” Reading Graphs Maps & Trees: Responses to Franco Moretti, ed. Johnathan Goodwin and John Holbo (Parlor Press), 64-70.
2010      “Asia and World Literature.” Comparative Literature Studies 47.3: 263-65.
2010      “On teaching students how to read poetry.” Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook, ed. Joshua Marie Wilkinson (University of Iowa Press).
2009      “EQ: 10 Years Later,” with Edward Wesp. Game Studies 9.1.
2009      Interviews with Chris Lena, Brad McQuaid, and Kevin McPherson. Game Studies 9.1.
2008      Review of Zhang Longxi, Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature Between East and West. Comparative Literature Studies 45.1: 122-26.
2007      Review of Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz, eds., Bad Modernisms. Modernism/Modernity 14.2: 364-65.
2006      “Modernisms’ Chinas: Introduction.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18.1: 1-7.
2005      “‘The Slightness of My Endeavor’: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak” Comparative Literature 57.3: 256-72.
2005      “Responding to Death of a Discipline: An ACLA Forum.” With Christopher Bush. Comparative Literature 57.3: 199-200.
2005      Review of Alex Woloch’s The One vs. the Many. Modernism/Modernity 12.2: 349-51.
2004      Review of Yunte Huang’s Transpacific Displacement and Steven G. Yao’s Translation and the Languages of Modernism. Yearbook of General and Comparative Literature 51: 185-92.
2004      Review of Rey Chow’s The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. CLEAR 26: 184-187.
2003      Review of Marie-Paule Ha’s Figuring the East. Yearbook of General and Comparative Literature vol. 50: 198-201.
2001      “Imagism” and “Cathay.” Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. Ed. Eric Haralson. Chicago: Fiztroy Dearborn, 321-324; 573-574.
2001      “Response” (to Jane Gallop’s “Resisting Reasonableness”). With Jeffrey King. Conflict of Interest and the Professions. Eds. Michael Davis and Andrew Stark (Oxford), 192-94.
1999      Review of Rey Chow’s Ethics after Idealism. Modern Chinese Literature 11.1: 219-25.
1997      Review of Robert Young’s Colonial Desire. Discourse 19.2: 194-97.

Talks/Seminars/Workshops

2025      “Comparative Method at the End of Aesthetic History.” Washington University (St. Louis).
Writing workshop. Washington University (St. Louis).

2024      “Do the Humanities Produce Knowledge?” University of Helsinki, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

              “Why Writing is Hard, and What to Do About It.” Writing workshop. Tampere University.

              “The End of Aesthetic History; or, Provincializing Modernism.” Tampere University.

2023      “The End of Aesthetic History.” Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania.

              “What Reading Is, What Reading Means.” Conference on Reading, University of Virginia.

              “After Crisis: Curriculum at the Fall.” University of St. Thomas.

              “Close Reading Needs a Better Theory of Actuality.” Conference on The Ethics of Close Reading, Penn State.

              Workshop on academic writing, Rutgers University.

2022      “On Reading.” Workshop. Princeton University.

              “After the Crisis: The Humanities and the Future.” University of Maryland

              “To Save the Humanities, Abandon the Curriculum; and, Laws of Form and the

End of Aesthetic History,” keynote, The Making of the Humanities X

“Laws of Form and the End of Aesthetic History.” Carnegie Mellon University.

“Remembering Jane.” University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

2021      “Futures of the Humanities.” University of Colorado

              “Advocating for the Humanities in the Classroom and in the Curriculum.” Grinnell College.

              “How to Think About the World (with Video Games).” Mount St. Mary’s University.

              “Introducing Introductions.” A writing event for graduate students. Columbia University

2020      “How Humanists Think.” University of Wyoming

2019      “Humanist Reason.” UC-Davis, Stockholm University, Calvin University.

              “Being Global: Why Bother?” Western Pennsylvania Undergraduate Literature Conference.

              Comparative Literature Workshop Series. Stanford University.

              Workshop on academic writing, UC-Santa Cruz.

2018      “Poetry Worlds.” McGill University.

“Why Humanists Should Care about Information.” University of Miami

              Workshops on academic writing, University of Miami, University of Southern Denmark.

“Does Poetry Produce Worlds, and If So, How?” University of Virginia.

2017      “Scale, Data, Literature.” Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Trinity College (Dublin)

              “Why Humanists Should Care about Information.” University of Washington.

2016      “What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?” Oxford University, Cornell University, University of Heidelberg.

Workshop on academic writing, UC-Santa Cruz.

2015      “On Literary Worlds.” University of Tampa.

“The European History of Chinese Metaphor.” Rutgers University.

Book event for Paul Saint-Amour’s Tense Future. Slought Foundation, Philadelphia.

Workshop/talks on academic writing. Northwestern University, University of Florida, Villanova University, Norwich University, ACLA conference.

              “What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?” Northwestern University. Brigham Young University, University of Virginia, Concordia University.

2014      Workshop on Elements of Academic Style. University of Minnesota (Asian Studies), Yale University (Sociology), Modernist Studies Association.

“What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?” University of Pennsylvania.

Workshop on On Literary Worlds and institutions. Rutgers University.

“Near Stars: Phenomenon Scale and the Literary Object.” Emory University and University of Minnesota (talk); Columbia University/NYNJ Modernists (workshop).

              Seminar leader, three days. Reading and Writing in the Age of Globalisation, Göttingen University.

“Scale, Hierarchy, and the Problem of World Literature.” Gothenberg University.

“How (Not) To Do Global Modernism.” University of Hamburg.

2013      “Academic Writing, I Love You.” University of Mainz.

              “Scale, Data, and World Literature.” Keynote, ELLAK Conference, Korea.

              “Modernity and the Ends of Europe.” Jacobs University, Bremen.

              “Sites of Knowledge: Academic Prose.” University of Heidelberg.

              “Who’s Afraid of China?” Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

              “Scale and the Ontology of the Literary Object.” University of Pennsylvania.

              “Academic Writing, I Love You. Really I Do.” University of Chicago & U of Pennsylvania.

              “On Literary Worlds,” and workshop on academic writing. Yale University.

2012      “Cosmographies: A Theory of Represented Worldedness.” Keynote, annual conference of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts.

              “Literary Worlds and Literary History.” UCLA and USC.

              “Literary Worlds” and “Against Periodization.” Nanjing University.

              “Cosmologies, Globalization, and Their Humans.” CUNY Graduate Center.

              “Cosmographesis; or, A History of Modern Literature as a World-Forming Activity.” University of Wisconsin-Madison.

              “Comparative Literature for the Twenty-First Century.” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

2011      “Literary Worlds and Literary History.” University of Chicago.

              “How to Do Comparative Modernism.” University of Pennsylvania.

              “1915: Ezra Pound Publishes Cathay.” Harvard University.

              “Display Cases.” UC-Berkeley.

              “Chinese Modernism and European Time.” Boston College and Northwestern University.

2010      “Cosmology, Time, and the World of Jia Zhangke.” McGill University.

              “Humanism’s Test: China, the West, the World.” Harvard University.

              “Hello Cutie: Whiteness and the Poetics of Error.” Princeton University.

2009      “Chinese Bodies, their Parts, and their Markets.” New York University.

              “The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain.” Michigan State.

2008      “Body Worlds: Another Thousand Cuts.” Yale University.

              “Lessons from the American Empire.” Washington University in St. Louis.

              “Untimeliness: ‘Asian’ Modernisms and the Fate of World Poetry.” Cambridge University.

              “Smith, Balzac, and the Example-Effect.” Yale University.

              “The Hypothetical Mandarin: An Introduction.” University of Pennsylvania.

2007      “Responding to the Sinophone.” Harvard University.

              “All Modernism is Transnational.” Rutgers University.

              “What’s Interesting about Online Virtual Worlds?” Hamilton College.

              “The Hypothetical Mandarin and the Invention of Sympathy.” UCLA International Institute.

2006      “To Heal a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance.” UC-Berkeley.

              “Ideologies of the Anesthetic.” Arizona Quarterly Symposium.

2005      “The Compassion Trade.” Princeton. Also UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, 2006.

       “The Ideograph’s Face: On the History of Western Reactions to Chinese Torture.” University of Wisconsin – Madison.

2005      “Bertrand Russell’s Chinese Eyes.” Tsinghua University.

              “Photograface: The Image as Sign-Thing.” UC-Irvine Graduate Colloquium.

2004      “The (Chinese) Body in Pain.” Orientalism and Modernism. King’s College, Cambridge University.

2003      “Author, Object: The Strange Case of Araki Yasusada.” Arizona Quarterly Symposium.

1997      “The Quality of Dreams: A Brief History of Western Representations of China, 1300-1937.” Beijing Foreign Studies University.

              “What to Say about China When You Get Home.” Capital Normal University, Beijing.