Interests: Modernist literature and visual art; critical theory and continental philosophy; the politics of aesthetics
and literary form; dialectical thinking; theories of modernity.
Education
PhD, English, Boston College, expected 2022
MA, Social Sciences, University of Chicago, 2012
BA, Anthropology and Biochemistry, Bowdoin College, 2011
Publications
Articles:
“The Aesthetic Death Drive of Modernism.” differences, vol. 31, no. 2, 2020, pp. 58–85.
Book Chapters:
“Adorno as a Reader: Writing the Mediation of Literature and Philosophy.” Modernism, Theory, and Responsible
Reading: A Critical Conversation, edited by Stephen Ross, Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2021.
“The Kafkaesque in the Trial of George Bluth.” A State of Arrested Development: Critical Essays on the Innovative
Television Comedy, edited by Kristin M. Barton, McFarland, 2015, pp. 180–96.
Book Reviews:
Review of Suzana Zink, Virginia Woolf’s Rooms and the Spaces of Modernity. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Modern Language Review, vol. 115, no. 1, 2020, pp. 170–71.
Review of Linda Nicole Blair, Virginia Woolf and the Power of Story: A Literary Darwinist Reading of Six Novels.
(McFarland, 2018). Modern Language Review, vol. 114, no. 3, 2019, pp. 559–60.
Review of Audrey Wasser, The Work of Difference: Modernism, Romanticism, and the Production of Literary Form
(Fordham UP, 2016). Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 63, no. 3, 2017, pp. 370–75.
“The Task of the Inheritor.” Review of Gerhard Richter, Inheriting Walter Benjamin (Bloomsbury, 2016). Mediations,
vol. 30, no. 1, 2016, pp. 91–5.
Public Writing:
“Kurt Vonnegut’s Socialism From Outer Space.” Tribune. April 2021.
“All Too Human: On Kurt Vonnegut’s Legacy.” Los Angeles Review of Books. February 2014.
“Vonnegut and Labor.” Jacobin. September 2013.
“Socialism on the Small Screen: On ‘Parks and Recreation.’” Los Angeles Review of Books. April 2013.
Honors
Fellowships:
Graduate Fellowship, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College. 2019–2020,
2021–2022.
Dalsimer Fellowship, Boston College Irish Studies Program. 2020–2021.
Matilda White Riley Fellowship, Bowdoin College. Summer 2010.
Grants and Awards:
Presidential Award, Boston College. 2015–2020.
Conference Travel Grant, Modern Language Association. Spring 2020.
Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award, Boston College. Spring 2019.
Mark of Distinction, Doctoral Qualifying Exams, Boston College. Spring 2017 and Fall 2019.
Conference Travel Grant, Modernist Studies Association. Fall 2019.
Conference Travel Grant, American Comparative Literature Association. Spring 2019.
Graduate Student Association Conference and Research Funding Grant, Boston College. Spring 2018.
Best Graduate Student Proposal, Literary London Conference. Summer 2017.
MA Scholarship, University of Chicago. 2011–2012.
Conference Participation
Invited Talks:
“The Severed Ear: Kristevan Abjection in Blue Velvet.” Graduate Symposium on Kristeva at the Harvard University
Mahindra Humanities Center. Cambridge, MA. February 2016.
Papers Presented:
“Flirting with Hegel: The Aesthetics of Marx’s Fetish.” Marxist Literary Group Institute for Culture and Society.
Online. Upcoming June 2021.
“The Simplest and Most Hegelian Manner Possible: Adorno’s Proustian Dialectic.” American Comparative Literature
Association Annual Meeting. Online. April 2021.
“Political Ecology and Postindividualist Subjectivity in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.” Modern Language
Association Annual Convention. Seattle, WA. January 2020.
“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Supersensual and Suprasensible Fetishization.” Modernist Studies Association
Annual Conference. Toronto, Canada. October 2019.
“Adornian Theory: The Dialectical Mediation of Literature and Philosophy.” Modernist Studies Association Annual
Conference. Toronto, Canada. October 2019.
“Late Modernist Lacan: Beckett’s Narrative Drive.” LACK III: Psychoanalysis & Separation. Worcester, MA. May 2019.
“Style, Reification, and the Nightmare of History in Ulysses.” American Conference for Irish Studies. Boston, MA.
March 2019.
“The silence of la grève: Divine Poetic Violence and the Form of the General Strike.” American Comparative
Literature Association Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. March 2019.
“Fragments Minus Ruins: The Waste Land as Materialist Historiography.” Modernist Studies Association Annual
Conference. Columbus, OH. November 2018.
“Images, Not Stories: Montage as the Form of History.” Modernist Studies Association Conference Annual
Conference. Columbus, OH. November 2018.
“The Aesthetic Death Drive of Modernism and Its Politics.” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual
Convention. Pittsburgh, PA. April 2018.
“The ‘last cess-pool in the universe’: History as Hell in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos.” Northeast Modern Language
Association Annual Convention. Pittsburgh, PA. April 2018.
“The Sublime Abject of Ideology: Revolting Intimacy and the Social Order in Blue Velvet.” The Kristeva Circle
Conference. Pittsburgh, PA. October 2017.
“The Dialectic of Dreaming and Awakening in Marxism and Psychoanalysis.” LACK II: Psychoanalysis and Politics
Now. Colorado Springs, CO. October 2017.
“An Apocalypse of Meaning: Language, Trauma, and Geography in the Londons of Woolf and Eliot.” Literary London
Conference. London, UK. July 2017.
“Anthropocene Ontology, Agency, and History in the Literary Ecosystem of For Whom the Bell Tolls.” American
Literature Association Annual Conference. Boston, MA. May 2017.
“The Gospel from Outer Space: The Messianic Political Theology of Kurt Vonnegut,” American Literature Association
Annual Conference. Washington, D.C. May 2014.
Conference Organization:
Seminar Organizer, “The Knowledge of Art.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Online.
April 2021.
Panel Organizer, “How Red Is Modernism?” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Toronto, Canada.
October 2019.
Reading Group Organizer, “What Is to Be Done with Non-Identity?” Marxist Literary Group Institute for Culture and
Society. Chicago, IL. June 2019.
Seminar Organizer, “Marxism and Form, Revisited.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting.
Washington, D.C. March 2019.
Session Organizer, “The Spatial Language of Literature: Sovereign Space and the Borders of Capital.” Northeast
Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Pittsburgh, PA. April 2018.
Conference Organizer, “Global Encounters.” Boston College English Department Graduate Student Colloquium.
Keynote Speaker: Rebekah Mitsein. November 2018.
Conference Organizer. “Literary Environments.” Boston College English Department Graduate Student Colloquium.
Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Howard. April 2018.
Conference Organizer, “Theory After Theory.” Boston College English Department Gradate Student Colloquium.
Keynote Speaker: Frances Restuccia. November 2017.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Positions:
Teaching Fellow, Boston College. 2017–2019.
Teaching Assistant, British Literature II, Boston College. Spring 2017.
Select Courses Taught:
Elective: “Epic Modernism.” Boston College. Fall 2018.
Literature Core: “Literature, History, Politics.” Boston College. Spring 2018/2019.
First-Year Writing Seminar: “Writing as a Critical Practice.” Boston College. Fall 2017.
Professional Activity and Service
Director, Boston College English Department Graduate Student Colloquium, 2016–2019.
President, Boston College English Department Graduate Student Association. 2017–2018.
Assistant Director, Boston College English Graduate Student Colloquium. 2015–2016.
Professional Affiliations
American Comparative Literature Association
American Conference for Irish Studies
Marxist Literary Group
Modern Language Association
Modernist Studies Association
Northeast Modern Language Association
References
Robert Lehman, Associate Professor of English
Boston College
Stokes Hall S411
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-3736
robert.lehman@bc.edu
Frances Restuccia, Professor of English
Boston College
Stokes Hall S379
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-8277
restucci@bc.edu
Kevin Ohi, Professor of English
Boston College
Stokes Hall S377
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-3733
ohi@bc.edu