John Stewart Bryan Professor of English, University of Virginia
My most recent book, Hooked: Art and Attachment, was published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2020. The book asks why and how we become attached to works of art and strives to do justice to the varieties of aesthetic experience. It continues a line of thought that I’ve developed in two previous books, Uses of Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and The Limits of Critique (University of Chicago Press, 2015). I’ve also recently published the co-edited collection Latour and the Humanities (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).
I’m now working on a new book that’s called Remix: On Literature and Theory that was prompted by the invitation to give the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge in the spring of 2021. In this book I bring literary studies into conversation with contemporary theory in the Frankfurt School tradition.
Degrees
Ph.D. Monash University, 1987
M.A. Monash University, 1982
B.A. Cambridge University, 1979