John McGowan
Department of English
CB #3520
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520
(919) 962-4022
JPM@email.unc.edu
Education
| 1978 | Ph.D., Department of English, State University
of New York at Buffalo. Dissertation: Dickens's Comic View of History Director: Joseph I. Fradin |
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| 1976 | MA., Department of English, SUNY at Buffalo. |
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| 1974 | BA., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. |
Teaching Experience
| 1994-- | Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
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| 2001 | Visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
University of California, Berkeley |
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| 1992-94 | Professor of English, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill. |
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| 1991-92 | Chair, Department of Humanities, Eastman School of Music,
University of Rochester |
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| 1987-91 | Associate Professor of English, Eastman School of Music. |
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| 1984-87 | Assistant Professor of English, Eastman School of Music. |
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| 1979-82 | Assistant Professor of English, Humanities Department,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. |
Grants and Awards
| 2001 | Director (with Allen Dunn, Univesity of Tennessee),
NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers on "Literature and Values." Total Amount of Grant: $106,000. |
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| 1999 | Chapman Fellowship Teaching Award, UNC, Chapel Hill. |
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| 1997 | Director, (with Allen Dunn of the University of Tennessee)
NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers on "Literature and Values." Total Amount of Grant: $104,427. |
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| 1994 | Fellow, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC,
Chapel Hill. Project: Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics |
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| 1993 | Participant, NEH Institute on Aesthetics and Ethics
at UC, Berkeley. |
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| 1990 | Participant, NEH Institute on Faust and the Humanities
Curriculum, UC, Santa Barbara. |
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| 1987-88 | NEH Senior Fellowship for Independent Research. Project: "Postmodernism and its Critics." |
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| 1982 | Tuition Scholarship to School of Criticism and Theory,
Northwestern University. |
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| 1980 | Participant, NEH Summer Seminar on Victorian and Modern
Poetics, UC, Berkeley |
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| 1979 | Dickens's Society Award for Best First Essay on Dickens |
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| 1976-78 | University Fellow, SUNY at Buffalo |
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| 1974 | Phi Beta Kappa, Georgetown University |
Publications
Books
Democracy's Children: Intellectuals and the Rise of Cultural Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming [2002]).
Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, co-editor with Vincent B. Leitch et.al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
Hannah Arendt: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics, edited volume of essays [with Craig Calhoun] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
Postmodernism and its Critics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Representation and Revelation: Victorian Realism from Carlyle to Yeats (Columbia, MO.: University of Missouri Press, 1986).
Essays and Book Chapters
"Literary Intellectuals for a Democratic Society," in Professions: The Future of Literary Studies, ed. Donald E. Hall (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 37-46.
"Modernity and Culture, the Victorians and Culture Studies," in Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century, ed. John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000): 3-28. Also published in Nineteenth Century Contexts 22, No. 1 (2000): 21-49.
"Toward a Pragmatist Theory of Action," Sociological Theory 16, No. 3 (Nov. 1998): 292-97.
"Teaching Literature: Where, How, and Why," Centennial Review XXXX, No. 1 (Winter 1996): 5-30.
"Introduction," [with Craig Calhoun], in Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics: 1-24.
"Must Politics Be Violent?: Hannah Arendt's Utopian Politics," in Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics: 263-96.
"Prolegomena to a Pragmatist Ethics," Southern Humanites Review XXVIII, No. 4 (Fall 1994): 313-31.
"Thinking about Violence: Feminism, Cultural Politics, and Norms," Centennial Review XXXVII, No. 3 (Fall 1993): 445-69.
"Postmodernism," The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
"From Pater to Wilde to Joyce: Modernist Epiphany and the Soulful Self," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32, No. 3 (Fall 1990): 417-45.
"The New Tory Radicals," Soundings LXXII, No. 2-3 (Summer 1989): 477-500.
"Can Marxism Survive?," Southern Humanities Review XXIII, No. 3 (Summer 1989): 241-52.
"Leslie Fiedler," Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern American Critics Since 1955, Vol. 67, Ed. Gregory S. Jay (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1988): 90-96.
"Postmodern Dilemmas," Southwest Review 72 (Summer 1987): 357-76.
"Looking at the (Alter)natives: Peter Weir's Witness," Chicago Review 35 (Spring 1986): 36-47.
"Oedipus at the Movies," Southern Humanities Review XX (Winter 1986): 1-11.
"Knowledge/Power and Jane Austen's Radicalism," Mosaic XVIII (Summer 1985): 1-15.
"Of Truth and Lies in Browning's Dramatic Monologues," South Carolina Review 16 (Fall 1983): 99-108.
"Democratic Vistas: An Officer and a Gentleman and The Verdict," New Orleans Review 10, No. 2-3 (Summer 1983): 27-34.
"A la Recherche du Temps Perdus in One Hundred Years of Solitude," Modern Fiction Studies 28 (Winter 1982-83): 557-67.
"'The Bitterness of Things Occult': D. G. Rossetti's Search for the Real," Victorian Poetry 20 (Autumn-Winter 1982): 45-60. Reprinted in Critical Essays on Dante Rossetti, ed. David G. Riede (New York: G. K. Hall, 1992).
"Mystery and History in Barnaby Rudge," Dickens Studies Annual 9 (New York: AMS Press, 1981): 33-52.
"The Turn of George Eliot's Realism," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35 (September 1980): 171-92.
"The Trial: Terminable/Interminable," Twentieth Century Literature 26 (Spring 1980): 1-14.
"David Copperfield: The Trial of Realism," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 34 (June 1979): 1-19. Reprinted in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1987): 67-82.
Reviews (Shortened List)
"Henry Staten's Eros in Mourning," Modern Language Quarterly.
"Hans Joas's Pragmatism and Social Theory," Social Forces, 75 (No. 1): 337-38.
"Craig Owens, Beyond Recognition," Postmodern Culture: An Online Journal Vol. 4, No. 1 (Sept 1993).
"Linda Shires (ed.), Rewriting the Victorians," Victorian Studies 37 (Autumn 1993): 147-49.
"Terry Eagleton, Ideology," Southern Humanites Review XXVII (Spring 1993): 166-69.
"Gerald Graff, Professing Literature," Southern Humanities Review XXIII, No. 2 (Spring 1989): 168-70.
"Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia," Partisan Review LV, No. 4 (1988): 690-92.
"A Generous Look at Things (Stanley Kauffmann's Field of View)," Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 196-200.
Invited Lectures
| 1991 | "The Culture of Postmodernism," Southeastern
Missouri State College. |
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| 1993 | "Interest and its Vicissitudes," The Centennial Review Lecture,
Michigan State University. Also presented at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor. |
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| 1994 | "Postmodern Pragmatism," Pennsylvania State University.
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| 1994 | "Toward a Pragmatist Ethics," University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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| 1995 | "Must the Self Tell a Story about Itself?," East Carolina University.
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| 1997 | "Too Much Fun?" UNC, Greensboro. |
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| 1999 | "Spectators, Narrators, and Other Strangers in the Arendtian Polis,"
Northwestern University. |
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| 2000 | "The Perils and Pleasures of Pluralism," University
of Tennessee, Knoxville. |
Conference Presentations (Since 1993)
| 1994 | "Arendt and Dewey on Judgment," Conference
on Modern Literature, Michigan State University. |
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| 1994 | "Institutionalizing Cultural Studies," MLA Convention,
San Diego. |
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| 1994 | Chair and Respondent for "Theory Now: Problems and Prospects,"
MLA Convention, San Diego. |
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| 1995 | Planned and ran (with Craig Calhoun) a two day conference
entitled "Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics" in Chapel Hill.
Also presented a paper, "Must Politics Be Violent?: Hannah Arendt's
Utopian Politics." |
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| 1995 | "Why Pragmatism Now?," American Education Studies Association,
Chapel Hill. |
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| 1995 | "Must the Self Tell a Story about Itself?" International
Conference of the Society for the Study of Narrative, Park City, Utah.
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| 1996 | "Kenneth Burke and the Narrative of Culture," International
Association for Philosophy and Literature, George Mason University.
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| 1997 | "Why Study the Victorian Novel?" International Conference
of the Society for the Study of Narrative, University of Florida.
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| 1997 | "Bringing It All Back Home: Child-Rearing in the 90s,"
Conference on Modern Literature, Michigan State University. |
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| 1998 | "The Victorian Origins of Cultural Studies," MLA Convention,
San Francisco. |
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| 1999 | "Changing Academic Styles," Conference on Transatlantic
Exchanges, 1945-2000, UNC, Chapel Hill. |
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| 1999 | "Poetry and Exemplars in the Critical Theory of Charles
Altieri," SAMLA, Atlanta. |
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| 2000 | "Headnotes, Headmasters and the Pedagogical Imaginary,"
MLA Convention, Washington D. C. |
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| 2001 | "Suffering, Joy, and the Aesthtic in Marcel Proust's
Time Regained," American Society of Aesthetics Conference, Asilomar,
CA. |
Conferences Organized
| 1994 | "Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics,"
UNC, Chapel Hill. |
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| 1999 | "Translatlantic Exchanges, 1945-2000," UNC, Chapel Hill.
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| 2000 | "Teaching for the Public Good: The Future of the Humanities,"
UNC, Chapel Hill. |
Academic Service at UNC
| 1992-97 | Director of Placement for Graduate Students,
English Department |
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| 1994 | English Department Committee on Graduate Curriculum
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| 1993-95; 1997-98 |
Chair's Advisory Committee, English Department |
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| 1997, 1999 | English Department Search Committee |
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| 1993 | AdHoc Arts & Sciences Committee on Cultural Studies |
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| 1993-94 | Member of Sub-Committee on Graduate Education for the
Re-accreditation Self-Study |
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| 1994-96 | Co-Director, Program in Social Theory and Cross-Cultural
Studies |
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| 1996-99 | Director, Program in Social Theory and Cross-Cultural
Studies |
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| 1996 | Chair, Search Committee for a New Dean of the Graduate
School |
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| 1995-96 | Advisory Board, University Program in Cultural Studies
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| 1995-98 | Advisory Board, Institute for Arts and Humanities |
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| 1996-1999 | Director, Royster Society of Fellows |
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| 1997-2000 | Advisory Board, Curriculum in Women's Studies |
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| 1997-1999 | Associate Director, University Program in Cultural Studies
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| 1997 | Participant, Humanities and Human Values Seminar on
"Private Interest and the Public Good." |
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| 1999-- | Associate Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities
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Professional Consulting
I have read manuscripts for Duke University Press, Cornell University Press, University of Michigan Press, University of Minnesota Press, Penn State Press, Stanford University Press, and University of Virginia Press as well as for PMLA, Mosaic, Cultural Studies, Sociological Theory, and minnesota review (among other journals).
I evaluated proposals for Fellowships for College Teachers for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1991.
I have written tenure and/or promotion letters for Syracuse University, the University of California at Berkeley, Indiana University, Loyola University of Chicago, Penn State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of Michigan, University of Rochester, University of South Carolina, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dissertations Directed and Read
I have directed fourteen dissertations (eleven in English, three in Comparative Literature) that have been completed since arriving at UNC in 1992 and am currently directing three dissertations, all in English.
I have served as a reader on over 30 dissertations since 1992, including theses written in the English, History, Political Science, and Religious Studies Departments, and the Curriculum in Comparative Literature.
Masters and Honors Theses Directed
I have directed seven master's theses and seven senior honors theses at UNC since 1992.
Courses Taught at UNC
Undergraduate:
English 23: Introduction to Fiction
English 25: Introduction to Poetry
English 43 and 43H: Novel from Defoe to Hardy
English 73: Victorian Literature
English 78: English Literature from 1870 -1910
English 90: Introduction to Literary Criticism
English 90C and International Studies 94: Literature and Theories of Race
and Ethnicity
Honors 32: Practices of Cultural Studies
Graduate:
English 240: Philosophy of Language
English 273: Victorian Non-Fictional Prose
English 291: Studies in Recent Literary and Cultural Theory
English 341: Seminar in Cultural Studies
English 391: Seminar in Feminist Theory
English 391 and American Studies 270: Seminar in American Pragmatism
English 140: Introduction to Literary Theory
English 140: Introduction to Narrative Theory
English 391: Hannah Arendt (team-taught with Craig Calhoun of the Sociology
Department)
Comparative Literature 150: Critical Theory, 1950-2000
Comparative Literature 242: Literary Criticism, 1750-1950
July 2001