Brook ThomasChancellor's Professor, English |
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Research Interests |
US Literature and Culture; Law and Literature; Literature and History | |
| URL | uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-8354.html | |
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Academic Distinctions | Von Humboldt Fellow; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow; ACLS Fellowship; NEH Fellowship: School of Humanities Distinguished Teaching Award | |
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Research Abstract |
After finishing my dissertation entitled "James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Book of Many Happy Returns," I experienced an important turn in my research interests when I was lucky enough—in a tight job market—to be invited to the University of Constance in Germany as a visiting assistant professor for a semester in 1976. In addition to offering a seminar on Joyce, I was asked, as an American, to teach a course on American literature. As I taught books of American literature in that bicentennial year, I realized that the perspective I gained from looking at my native culture from a foreign perspective gave me something worthwhile to say. So, even though I ended up publishing my book on Joyce, I found myself turning more and more to works written in the United States. Indeed, my perspective of being both inside and yet somewhat outside US culture was enhanced by my first regular job at the University of Hawaii and another research and teaching year in Germany. I became especially interested in the different uses of language in US law and US literature, an interest that led to my first book on law and literature and to a year’s exchange at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. UMass lured me away from Hawaii for three years, a time that I devoted to a new interest in the turn to history in literary studies. These interests—law and literature/literature and history—remain the primary focus of my research, although both have led to a new interest in the relation between literature and the nation. All three of these interests come together in my latest book, Civic Myths, which is on law, literature, and the question of citizenship. | |
| Publications | Civic Myths: A Law and Literaure Approach to Citizenship. University of North Carolina Press, 2007. http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-8354.html | |
| American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract. University of California, 1997 | ||
| The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics. Princeton UP, 1991 | ||
| Cross-examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville. Cambridge UP, 1987 | ||
| James Joyce's "Ulysess': A Book of Many Happy Returns. LSU Press, 1982. | ||
| Liberty Ltd.: Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, and Literaure. Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006. (edited) | ||
| Law and Literature. Gunter Narr, 2002. (edited) | ||
| Literature and the Nation. Gunter Narr, 1998 (edited) | ||
| Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford, 1997. (edited) | ||
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"(The) Nation-State Matters: Comparing Multiculturalism(s) in an Age of Globalization," in Globalization and the Humanities, (2004) |
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| "A Constitution Led by the Flag: The INSULAR CASES and the Metaphor of Incorporation," FOREIGN IN A DOMESTIC SENSE, eds. Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, Duke UP, 2001: 82-103. | ||
| "Citizen Hester: The Scarlet Letter as Civic Myth," ALH (2001) | ||
| "Re-staging the Reception of Iser's Early Work; Or Sides Not Taken in Discussions of the Aesthetic." NLH (2000) | ||
| "Stigmas, Badges, and Brands: Discriminating Marks in Legal History." History, Memory, and the Law. (1999) | ||
| "China Men, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, and the Question of Citizenship." American Quarterly. (1998) | ||
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Professional Societies |
MLA American Studies Association Herman Melville Society |
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| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2519 | |
| Last updated | 08/25/2009 | |