Awards

PSU Institute for Arts and Humanities, Interdisciplinary Group grant co-recipient: “The Arts in Public Life”
NEH Summer Seminar, “Modernist Paris,” July-August 2006
PSU Institute for Arts and Humanities, Teaching Across the Disciplines grant for team-taught course, 2006
Research Fellow, Harry Ransom Center
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University (declined)
Bourse Chateaubriand Fellow, France

 

Book

Surrealism and the Art of Crime, Cornell University Press, 2008

 

Edited Journal Issues

“Contemporary Vanguard Cultures”(special issue of Postmodern Culture 18:1, forthcoming in 2008).

Special Issue Co-Editor, with Jeremy Braddock, “Paris, Modern Fiction, and the Black Atlantic” Modern Fiction Studies 51:4 (Winter 2005).

 

Articles

Journal Articles

• “Adoptive Affinities: Josephine Baker’s Humanist International,” S&F Online, special issue on Josephine Baker, ed. Kaiama Glover.  Forthcoming in 2008.

• “Anti-Humanism and Terror: Surrealism, Theory, and the Postwar Left” Yale French Studies 109 (2006), 39-51.

• “Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic,” Introduction to “Paris, Modern Fiction, and the Black Atlantic,” with Jeremy Braddock.  Modern Fiction Studies 51:4 (Winter 2005), 731-740.

• “The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série Noire” PMLA 120: 3 (May 2005), 806-821.

• “Violette Nozières et la réécriture alchimique du viol,” Pleine Marge 40 (December 2004), 61-77.

• “Chandler’s Waste Land,” Studies in the Novel 35: 3 (Fall 2003), 366-382.

• “That Obscure Object of Revolt: Heraclitus, Surrealism’s Lightning-Conductor,” Symploke 8: 1-2 (Spring 2000), 180-204.

•  “Trafficking in the Void: The Consumption of Otherness in the Beat Generation.”  Modern Fiction Studies 43:1 (Spring 1997), 53-92.

Book Chapters and Other Contributions

• “Misère de la pornographie: Du surréalisme à l’écriture féminine.” Plaisir, souffrance et sublimation, ed. Jean-Michel Devesa. Bordeaux: Pleine Page (2008).

• Assistant Editor, with Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Themes and Movements (London: Phaidon, 2004).

• “‘The Exact Representation of the World’: Leonora Carrington’s Labyrinth of Fear” (forthcoming in edition of conference procedings, Surrealism Laid Bare).

• “Locked Room, Bloody Chamber,” Surrealism: Crossings/Frontiers, ed. Elza Adamowitz (Berlin: Peter Lang, forthcoming).

• “On Murder, Considered As One of the Surrealist Arts: Robert Desnos in the Shadow of Jack the Ripper,” Surrealism in the New Century: Celebrating Robert Desnos, eds. Marie-Claire Barnet, Eric Robertson, and Nigel Smith (Dublin: Philomel Press, 2004).

• Entries on Chester Himes, Marcel Duhamel, Philippe Soupault, and Benjamin Péret in Enclyclopedia of the French Atlantic, ed. Bill Marshall (Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2005).

• “Surrealism Noir,” Surrealism, Politics, and Culture, eds. Raymond Spiteri and Donald LaCoss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2003).

• “The Cheerless Art of Industry: Marcel Duchamp and the Smithee Readymade,” Directed By Allen Smithee, eds. Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock, (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001), 229-247.

Reviews and Review Essays

• Review of Dafydd Jones, ed. Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde. Avant-Garde Critical Studies, v. 18.  Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006.  In Symploke (forthcoming).
• Review of Caroline Rupprecht. Subject to Delusions: Narcissism, Modernism, Gender. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2006. In German Quarterly (forthcoming).
•  Review of John Cullen Gruesser, Confluences: Postcolonialism, African American Literature Studies, and the Black Atlantic (Georgia UP, 2005) in Modern Fiction Studies 52:3 (2006), 748-752.
• Review of Susan Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art (Lund Humphries, 2004) in Papers of Surrealism (forthcoming).
• “Object Lessons: Surrealist Art, Surrealist Politics,” Review Essay: Steven Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche; Johanna Malt, Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics; David Bate, Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Social Dissent; and Jean Clair, Du surréalisme considéré dans ses rapports au totalitarianisme et aux tables tournantes.    In Modernism/ Modernity 12.1 (2005), 175-181.
• “The Edges of Surrealism,” Review essay: Katharine Conley, Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life; Claudine Frank, ed., The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader; and Eric Zafran, Surrealism and Modernism.  In Journal of Modern Literature 26: 3/4, Spring 2004.
• Review essay, Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit; and David Joselit, Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941. In  Other Voices, v.1, n.2 (September 1998) http://www.othervoices.org/1.2

Translations

•  Robert Desnos, “The Third Manifesto of Surrealism,” “A Description of the Next Revolt,” and “Modern Imagery,” The Essential Writings of Robert Desnos, ed. Mary Ann Caws. Boston: Commonwealth Books (2008).
• Michel Fabre, “René, Louis, and Léopold: Senghorian Negritude as a Black Humanism,” with Randall Cherry.  Modern Fiction Studies 51:4 (Winter 2005).

• Louis Aragon, “A Note on Freedom” (1925); René Char, “Untitled [Violette Nozières]” (1933); René Crevel,  “Response to an Inquiry on Suicide” (1925) and “Notes toward a Psycho-Dialectic” (1933); Maurice Heine, “An Open Letter to Luis Buñuel" (1931); André Masson, “The Tyrrany of Time” (1926); Pierre Naville, “Fine Arts” (1925); Benjamin Péret, “Untitled [Violette Nozières]” (1933).  In Surrealism, ed. Mary Ann Caws (London: Phaidon Press, 2004).

 

Sessions Organized and Panels Chaired

Seminar co-organizer, with Janine Mileaf, 2005 MSA: “The Avant-Garde and its Object.”

Seminar organizer and chair, 2005 ACLA: “The Use-Value of the Avant-Garde.”

Special session organizer, 2004 MLA: “Paranoia, Theory, Paranoia.”

Panel co-organizer, with Laurie Monahan, 2004 MSA: “Violence and the Event.”

Chair and organizer, special session, 2003 MLA: “Surrealism and the Sadean Woman.”

Chair and panel organizer, 2003 American Studies Association: “Strikers, Communists, and Detectives.”

Panel co-organizer, with Jeremy Braddock, 2002 MSA: “Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic”

Panel organizer, double session, 2000 MSA: “The Surrealist Intervention I and II.”

Participated in  7-day colloquium, “Robert Desnos pour l’an 2000,” Cérisy-la-Salle, France, July 2000.

Co-organized two interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Pennsylvania:  “Specters of Legitimacy: A Retrospective and Conference on the Films of Allen Smithee” (Fall 1998), and “Body Parts/ Partial Bodies, An Interdisciplinary Conference” (Spring 1997).

 

Lectures and Conference Presentations

“Misère de la pornographie: du surréalisme à l’écriture féminine”

Invited Lecture, “Plaisir, souffrance et sublimation du corps,” Bordeaux, France, December 2005.

“Anti-Humanism and Terror: Surrealism, Theory, and the Postwar Left”

Invited Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 2005.

“Is Philadelphia Paris?: Film Noir, Brotherly Love, and the Critique of Urban Geography.” 

“Cold War France and America: New Perspectives,” Florida State University, February 2005.

“The Hard-Boiled Ethics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman”

Invited Lecture, Florida State University; Concordia University; University of California, Davis, January 2005.

“Goodis, Truffault, and the Psychogeography of Brotherly Love”

Special Session: “Writing Philadelphia” MLA, Philadelphia, December 2004.

“Persecution Mania: Surrealism, Marxism, Fascism”

Special Session: “Paranoia, Theory, Paranoia,” MLA, Philadelphia, December 2004.

“The Death of Nick Carter: Race and the American Dime Novel in Jazz-Age Paris”

ASA Annual Conference, Atlanta GA, November 2004.

“True Crime, Imaginary Terror”

“Imaginary Violence,” MSA 6, Vancouver, BC, October 2004.

“Hard-Boiled Ethics”

“Narrative Ethics,” Modern Language Association, December 2003.

“‘The Exact Representation of the World’: Leonora Carrington’s Labyrinth of Fear.”

“Surrealism Laid Bare,” International Symposium, Chichester, England, May 2003.

“Locked Room, Bloody Chamber: Surrealism, Photography, and the Architecture of Murder.”

Invited Lecture, Harvard University, The Literature Concentration, April 2003.

“X Marks the Spot: Sade, Surrealism, and the Exquisite Corpse,”

“Surrealism and Sade,” Colloque International Sade,Charleston, South Carolina, March 2003.

“Notes Toward a Psycho-Dialectic: Lacan, Crevel, Aimée,”

“The Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism in the 21st Century,” Columbia SC, Feb. 2003.

“Jules Monnerot’s Red Surrealism”

“Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic,” Modernist Studies Association 4, October 2002.

“Violette Nozières et la récriture alchimique du viol”

Invited lecture, “Ce que les femmes surréalistes ont écrit, dit, ou fait,” Paris VII, March 2002.

“The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série Noire,”

Invited Lecture, Michigan State University Department of English, January 2002.

“Le Surréalisme et l’art du crime”

Invited lecture, French Institute for Culture and Technology, Philadelphia, December 2001.

“Chester Himes: French Surrealism and American Detective Fiction”

“Americans in Paris/Paris in Americans,” The Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, July 2001.\

“On Murder, Considered As One of the Surrealist Arts: Robert Desnos in the Shadow of Jack the Ripper”

“Surrealism in 2000: Celebrating Robert Desnos,” University of London, November 2000.

“‘All the World’s Curtains Drawn’: Violette Nozières and the Surrealist Book.”

Modernist Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, October 2000.

“‘Surréaliste dans la dialectique’: Héraclite et le coup de foudre matérialiste.”

Invited Lecture, Seminaire du C.N.R.S., “Aesthesis et Empathie,”  Paris, April 2000.

“Poe, Lippard, and the Invention of Paranoia: Crime Fiction in Philadelphia.”

Poe Studies Association Sesquicentennial Conference, Richmond, VA, October 1999; and

“The American City,” Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, April 1999.

“Chandler’s Waste Land.”

Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 1999; and

North Eastern Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh PA, April 1999.         

“Jack Johnson, The Big Fight, and the Cultural Poetics of Boxing.” 

Northeast Popular Culture Association, Boston MA, October 1997.

(with David Kaiser) “Pulp Non-Fiction: Shifting Voices in the Popularization of Postwar Physics.” 

Society for Literature and Science, Atlanta GA, October 1996.

“Trafficking in the Void.” 

19th Annual Spring Symposium in American Studies, Purdue University, April 1994.