Alexander Manshel
20th and 21st century听American literature; multi-ethnic American literature; sociology of literature; literary canon formation; historical fiction; literature and technology.
My research and teaching focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, multi-ethnic American fiction, and the cultural institutions that organize the contemporary literary field. How do the people and institutions that contribute to the production, circulation, and reception of contemporary literature influence the various forms that it takes? How do they shape our sense of what is considered literary in the first place? These are just some of the questions that motivate my research.听My first book,听Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon听(Columbia University Press, 2023), provides a new history of contemporary fiction that documents how the politics of historical recovery have fundamentally altered American literature and defined the canonization of writers of color.听My other published writing examines the influence of literary prizes on what we read, teach, and study; the divergent representations of technology in more popular and more prestigious fiction; and the impact of new (and newly important) venues for literary experience, such as literary adaptations to television and the digital audiobook. I am currently at work on a second monograph, tentatively titled听High School English: A History of American Reading.
M.A., Ph.D. (Stanford University)
M.A. (Bread Loaf School of English)
B.A. (Middlebury College)
Books
听(Columbia University Press, 2023).听
Articles and Chapters
鈥.鈥听The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story. Eds. Michael Collins and Gavin Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 62鈥79.
鈥鈥澨PMLA听(January 2020).
鈥溾听MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States听(December 2020).
鈥.鈥澨Post45: Peer Reviewed听(September 2017).
Reviews and Public Scholarship
"." The Nation (September 2024).
""听Interview with WNYC's On the Media (December 2023).
鈥.鈥澨Public Books听(November 2023). Co-authored with Melanie Walsh.
".鈥 Literary Hub (November 2023).
鈥.鈥澨Los Angeles Review of Books听(May 2023). Co-authored with Laura B. McGrath and J.D. Porter.
"." Interview with WNYC's听On the Media听(March 2023).
鈥.鈥澨The Atlantic听(July 2021). Co-authored with Laura B. McGrath and J.D. Porter.
鈥溾澨Public Books听(September 2019). Co-authored with Laura B. McGrath and J.D. Porter.
- Principal鈥檚 Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 看片视频 University, 2023.
- Louis Dudek Award for Excellence in Teaching, 看片视频 University Department of English, 2023.
- 鈥淩ace and the Formation of the Contemporary Literary Canon,鈥 SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2022鈥2024.
- 鈥淟a race et la formation du canon litt茅raire contemporain,鈥 FRQSC Soutien 脿 la recherche pour la rel猫ve professorale, 2022鈥2025.
I am eager to supervise graduate students interested in contemporary literature, 20th听and 21st听century American literature, multi-ethnic American fiction, literary institutions and literary canon formation, historical fiction, and/or literary genre.
Stanford University