Hosted by Professor David James, School of English, Drama, American and Canadian Studies
May 2019
A world-leading authority in modern fiction studies, Prof. Dorothy Hale’s work spans the history and theory of the novel, with a particular emphasis on the intersection between literature and ethics. Given the range, prominence, and energy of her current work, Prof. Hale’s activities while at Birmingham will touch on a variety of fields within EDACS, including nineteenth-century culture, stylistics, modernist studies, and world literature.
Prof Hale’s research focuses on two related fields: the Anglo-American novel, especially from 1875 to the present, and the theory of the novel, which develops into its own discipline during this period. She is particularly interested in problems of novelistic form. For her work on point of view, voice, narrative, and the politics of form, see Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present (Stanford UP, 1998) and The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900-2000 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
Recent articles related to her current book project, The Novel and the New Ethics, include "On Beauty as Beautiful? The Problem of Novelistic Aesthetics by way of Zadie Smith" (Contemporary Literature, 2012); "Aesthetics and the New Ethics: Theorizing the Novel in the Twenty-first Century" (PMLA, 2009); "The Art of English Fiction in the Twentieth Century" (The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel, 2009); "Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel" (Narrative, 2007).
Other recent projects include "Faulkner's Light in August and New Theories of Novelistic Time" in A Question of Time, ed. Cindy Weinstein, Cambridge UP (forthcoming November 2018) and "The Place of the Novel in Reparative Reading," forthcoming in Studies in the Novel, special anniversary issue.
If you would like full details of the plans for Professor Hale’s fellowship or would like to meet with her during her visit as an Institute of Advanced Studies Distinguished Visiting Fellow, please contact Sue Gilligan.