Literary Theory
The English department offers a strong and diverse tradition of engaging various practices of literary and cultural theory, including narrative theory, feminism and queer theory, psychoanalysis, marxism and various modes of historicism and cultural engagement, deconstruction, postcolonial, transnational, and globalization theory, and legal theory. Individual faculty profiles describe specific interests in these regards.
Our Faculty
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Jonathan Auerbach Professor Director, Graduate Placement |
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Ralph Bauer Associate Professor |
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Tita Chico Associate Professor Associate Dean for Fellowships and Awards, The Graduate School |
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William A. Cohen Professor Associate Chair |
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Michael Israel Associate Professor |
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Linda Kauffman Professor Distinguished Scholar-Teacher |
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Matthew Kirschenbaum Associate Professor Associate Director, MITH |
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Marilee Lindemann Associate Professor Director, LGBT Studies |
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Carla Peterson Professor |
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Sangeeta Ray Professor Director, Graduate Studies |
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Brian Richardson Professor |
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Martha Nell Smith Professor Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, ADVANCE Professor |
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Jesse Oak Taylor Visiting Assistant Professor American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow |
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Christina Walter Assistant Professor |
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Orrin Wang Professor |
Faculty Bookshelf
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Associate Professor Tita Chico Atlantic Worlds in the Long Eighteenth Century: Seduction and Sentiment Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 |
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Professor Orrin Wang Romantic Sobriety: Sensation, Revolution, Commodification, History The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011 |
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Associate Professor Michael Israel The Grammar of Polarity: Pragmatics, Sensitivity, and the Logic of Scales Cambridge University Press, 2011 |
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Professor Jonathan Auerbach Dark Borders: Film Noir and American Citizenship Duke University Press, 2011 |
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Associate Professor Tita Chico Journal Editor, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation Penn Press, 2011 |
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Professor Carla Peterson Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City Yale University Press, 2011 |
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Associate Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010 |
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Professor Sangeeta Ray Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words Wiley Blackwell, 2009 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer Editor, with Jose Antonio Mazzotti, Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities University of North Carolina Press, 2009 |
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Professor William A. Cohen Embodied: Victorian Literature and the Senses University of Minnesota Press, 2008 |
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Professor Martha Nell Smith Co-editor, Emily Dickinson's Correspondences: A Born-Digital Textual Inquiry The University of Virginia Rotunda Press, 2008 |
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Professor Brian Richardson Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices University of Nebraska Press, 2008 |
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Professor Martha Nell Smith Co-editor, with Mary Loeffelholz, A Companion to Emily Dickinson Wiley-Blackwell, 2008 |
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Associate Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination MIT Press, 2008 |
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Professor Jonathan Auerbach Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations University of California Press, 2007 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman Editor, Reading Renaissance Ethics Routledge, 2007 |
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Professor Brian Richardson Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction Ohio State University Press, 2006 |
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Professor Jonathan Auerbach Editor, The Iron Heel, by Jack London Penguin, 2006 |
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Associate Professor Marilee Lindemann Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather Cambridge University Press, 2005 |
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Professor William A. Cohen Co-editor, with Ryan Johnson, Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life University of Minnesota Press, 2005 |
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Associate Professor Tita Chico Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture 2005 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru
By Titu Cusi Yupanqui University of Colorado Press, 2005 |
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Associate Professor Ralph Bauer The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity Cambridge University Press, 2003 |
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Professor Brian Richardson Editor, Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames Ohio State University Press, 2002 |
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Professor Orrin Wang Fantastic Modernity: Dialectical Readings in Romanticism and Theory Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000 |
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Professor Sangeeta Ray En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives Duke University Press, 2000 |
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Associate Professor Marilee Lindemann Willa Cather: Queering America Columbia University Press, 1999 |
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Professor Linda Kauffman Bad Girls and Sick Boys: Fantasies in Contemporary Art and Culture University of California Press, 1998 |
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Professor Martha Nell Smith Co-editor, with Ellen Louise Hart, Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson Paris Press, 1998 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman The Story of All Things: Writing the Self in English Renaissance Narrative Poetry Duke University Press, 1998 |
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Professor Marshall Grossman Editor, Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon University of Kentucky Press, 1998 |
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Associate Professor Marilee Lindemann Editor, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather Oxford University Press, 1997 |
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Professor Brian Richardson Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative University of Delaware Press, 1997 |
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Professor Jonathan Auerbach Editor, Northland Stories, by Jack London Penguin, 1997 |
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Professor Jonathan Auerbach Male Call: Becoming Jack London Duke University Press, 1996 |
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Professor William A. Cohen Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction Duke University Press, 1996 |
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Professor Carla Peterson "Doers of the Word": African-American Women Speakers & Writers in the North (1830-1880) Oxford University Press, 1995 |
Upcoming Events
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Urlich Recital Hall (1121 Tawes)
Friday, October 26, 2012
2115 Tawes Hall
News
October 25, 2011
This symposium promises to help participants redefine and rethink the ways they research, teach, discuss, and conceptualize categories surrounding “world literature" and promises to have wide-ranging impact across the humanities.
March 30, 2011
On March 29, 2011, the University of Maryland’s English department was deeply
saddened with the news of the death of Professor Marshall Grossman, who died
after a four-month battle with cancer. He was 63 years old.
January 19, 2010
University Provost Nariman Farvardin has selected Martha Nell Smith as a 2010-2011 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.
May 4, 2009
The career of Adele Berlin, Robert H. Smith Professor of Bible, was celebrated by the University on the occasion of her retirement.
February 1, 2008
The Spring Theory Colloquium (ENGL 798B), associated with the Graduate Certificate in Critical Theory, focuses on the topic of ETHICS.
January 23, 2008
Professor Brian Richardson's book, Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2006) has won the 2007 Perkins Prize.
January 23, 2008
Professor Brian Richardson's book, Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2006) has won the 2007 Perkins Prize.
Prospective Students
Alongside the many occasional events and lectures concerning "theory" featured in the English Department, and highlighted on the home page of its website and its calendar, advanced students are also especially recommended to consider the special theory colloquia, often featuring distinguished guests, offered each semester by rotating faculty members
