Israel J. Kapstein Professor Philip Gould's courses “ENGL 1512A: Freaks of Nature: Emerson, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists” and "The American Revolution,” co-taught with Associate Professor of History Seth Rockman, included as part of the initiative.

With the support of a Solomon Award and IBES Catalyst Grant, Elizabeth Rush is spending the 2024-2025 academic year in Bogotá conducting research on her book-in-progress, These Andes, about raising a bi-cultural family on an endangered planet.

Interview with Nonfiction Program Senior Lecturer Kate Schapira about her recent book, Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World.

First-year graduate student Katherine J. Chen, winner of the 2023 American Library in Paris Book Award, returns to the Library to discuss her fictionalized account of the life of Joan of Arc with Patricia Dailey (Columbia University).

Misrecognitions mounts a vigorous defense of the labyrinthine plotting of Victorian novels, notorious for their implausible concluding revelations and coincidences. Critics have long decried Victorian recognition scenes—the reunions and retroactive discoveries of identity that too conveniently bring the story to a close—as regrettable contrivances. Ben Parker counters this view by showing how these recognition scenes offer a critique of the social and economic misrecognitions at work in nineteenth-century capitalism.

The 2023 jury—consisting of Lauren Groff (chair), Doan Bui and Sudhir Hazareesingh—wrote of the book:

“Congratulations to Katherine J. Chen for Joan, winner of the eleventh annual American Library in Paris Book Award. The book is a fierce fictional retelling of the life of Joan of Arc. Deeply researched and fully imagined, Joan manages to subvert the old, dusty narratives about the ardent virgin warrior from Domremy in Eastern France, and creates a flawed, complicated, and compelling heroine for our age.”

The winner was announced by jury member Doan Bui before an audience of Library supporters on 9 November at the George C. Marshall Center in the Hôtel de Talleyrand on the Place de la Concorde.

What is the relation between the novel and ethical thought? Henry James and the Promise of Fiction argues that the answer to this question lies not in the content of a work of fiction but in its form. Stuart Burrows explores the relationship between James's ethical vision and his densely metaphorical style, his experiments with narrative time, and his radical reimagining of perspective.

First-Year PhD student Katherine Chen's Joan: A Novel (Random House USA / Hodder & Stoughton UK), has been shortlisted for the 2023 American Library in Paris Book Award. The winner will be announced on 9 November 2023. Joan is Chen's second published novel, and it is a thrilling, feminist reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc, from her childhood until her capture.

Elizabeth Rush writes about interspecies care on our imperiled planet for the Sunday edition of the New York Times.

Professor Kevin McLaughlin's book, The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program, was published by Fordham University Press in January 2023

Prof. Dixa Ramírez-D'Oleo's new book, This Will Not Be Generative, published by Cambridge University Press, "attends to the semiotics of ecological writings via Caribbean literary studies and black critical theory. Closely reading texts by Donna Haraway, Monique Allewaert, and Lisa Wells, and exposes how the language of tentacles and tendrils, an assumptive 'we,' and redemptive sympathy or 'care' disguises extraction from black people and blackness. This often speculative rhetoric, abetted by fantasies of white communion with indigenous groups, contrasts with the horror semiotics of the films Get Out (2017) and Midsommar (2019), which unmask the antagonistic relationship between white survival 'at the end of the world' and blackness as compost."

The best piece of advice I can think of is to be flexible and adaptable to the changing realities of the field/job market/this crazy and precarious world, and be creative and expansive in your conception of what a PhD in English can contribute (a lot!)

Remember that your own happiness is more important than proving to yourself or others that you can succeed in a job market that is fundamentally broken.

By dumb luck I got at tenure-track job my first year on the market. You must keep that in mind: Brown will get you in the mix, but from there it is 75% luck.

As writers, teachers, editors, and researchers, our skills are broadly applicable. It might feel difficult to communicate that to potential employers without a full-time job on your resume, but a little experience here and there during graduate school can help get your foot in the door.

Professor Timothy Bewes wins the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Free Indirect: The Novel In A Postfictional Age!

Timothy Bewes's recent book, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age, was named a 2022 National Book Critics Award finalist in Criticism.

Grace Talusan, Lecturer in the Nonfiction Writing Program, has been awarded The Massachusetts Fellowship, a fully funded, 4-week residency focused on building a close-knit cohort of Massachusetts artists of all disciplines from across the Commonwealth.

Grace Talusan, Lecturer in the Nonfiction Writing Program, interviews Monica Macansantos about her latest collection of stories, Love and Other Rituals (University of Melbourne’s Grattan Street Press, 2022).