By Lilian R. Furst (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) "All is true," realist writers would say of their work, to which critics now respond: All is art and artifice. Offering a new approach to reading nineteenth-century realist fiction, Lilian R. Furst seeks to reconcile these contradictory claims. In doing so, she clarifies the deceptions, appropriations, intentions, and … Continued
By Deborah Epstein Nord (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) and Maria DiBattista In a bold and sweeping reevaluation of the past two centuries of women’s writing, At Home in the World argues that this body of work has been defined less by domestic concerns than by an active engagement with the most pressing issues of public life: from class … Continued
By Mary Kinzie (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) In this exceptional new collection, acclaimed poet Mary Kinzie opens her attention to the landscapes of the earth. Her poems of richly varied line lengths develop phrases at the syncopated pace of the observing mind: “Slag and synthesis and traveling fire / so many ways the groundwaves of distortion … Continued
Edited by Marie-Rose Logan (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) and Peter L. Rudnytsky In Contending Kingdoms, Marie-Rose Logan and Peter L. Rudnytsky bring together important critics working in English and French Renaissance literature to provide a lively debate that is at once crossdisciplinary and crosscultural. The editors have organized the book's fifteen essays into three sections that … Continued
Edited by Lilian R. Furst (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) and Peter W. Graham This book explores the various manifestations of eating disorders in literature, including cannibalism, the magic attributes of food, religiously motivated fasting, and children's eating problems, from the classical period to Toni Morrison, in American, British, and European texts. The underlying, unifying theme is … Continued
By Andrew P. Debicki (NHC Fellow, 1979–80; 1992–93)
By Alice Kaplan (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) Brilliantly uniting the personal and the critical, French Lessons is a powerful autobiographical experiment. It tells the story of an American woman escaping into the French language and of a scholar and teacher coming to grips with her history of learning. Kaplan begins with a distinctly American quest for an imaginary … Continued
By Kevin Ohi (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) Kevin Ohi proposes that to read Henry James—particularly the late texts—is to confront the queer potential of style and the traces it leaves on the literary life. Ohi asserts that James’s queerness is to be found neither in the homoerotic thematics of the texts nor in the suggestions of … Continued
By William C. Dowling (NHC Fellow, 1979–80) Frederic Jameson is widely regarded as one of the most original and influential Marxist critics of the last decades. His most controversial work, The Political Unconscious, had an enormous impact on literary criticism and cultural studies. In Jameson, Althusser, Marx, first published in 1984, Professor Dowling sets out … Continued
By R. W. B. Lewis (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) With both his range of interests and his breadth of perspective, R. W. B. Lewis has cut a broad swath through the world of letters over the decades. He has written on subjects from the Greek and Roman classics through modern European writers to such Americans as … Continued