Joel Black
Encyclopedia
Joel Black is a Professor of Comparative Literature
at the University of Georgia
in Athens
, Georgia. Black has written extensively on subfields of literature and film studies areas such as romanticism
, postmodernism
, philosophy and history of science
, and cultural studies
. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (1991) and The Reality Effect: Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative (2002).
, and then one year later he finished his M.A. in English Literature, also at Columbia University
. In the 1976-77 school year, Black won a fellowship called the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienststipendium, and in 1979, he won a Fellowship at the School of Criticism and Theory at the University of California at Irvine). In 1979, Black completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Stanford University
.
In the 1982-83 school term, Black won an NEH Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, and in 1989, he won a Fulbright Travel Grant. In 1990, 1992, 1994-96, and 1998, Black won University of Georgia
Faculty Research Grants, and in 1997, Black received the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Fellowship.
. From 1983 to 1986, he was an Assistant Prof. of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia
.
In 1986, Black was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Georgia
. In 1986 and 1989, Black was a UGA Exchange Professor at Universitaire, Instelling Antwerpen, Antwerp, in Belgium. In 1990, Black was a Visiting Professor at Emory University
. In 2003, Black was promoted to Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia
.
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
in Athens
Athens, Georgia
Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...
, Georgia. Black has written extensively on subfields of literature and film studies areas such as romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, philosophy and history of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (1991) and The Reality Effect: Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative (2002).
Education and Awards
In 1972, Black completed his B.A. at Columbia College of Columbia UniversityColumbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
, and then one year later he finished his M.A. in English Literature, also at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. In the 1976-77 school year, Black won a fellowship called the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienststipendium, and in 1979, he won a Fellowship at the School of Criticism and Theory at the University of California at Irvine). In 1979, Black completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
In the 1982-83 school term, Black won an NEH Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, and in 1989, he won a Fulbright Travel Grant. In 1990, 1992, 1994-96, and 1998, Black won University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
Faculty Research Grants, and in 1997, Black received the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library , one of twelve official libraries at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the most comprehensive rare books and manuscripts libraries in the United States, with particular strengths in English literature and history , Oscar Wilde, and fine...
Fellowship.
Research and Teaching
In 1978-79, Black was an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College in New York state. From 1979 to 1982, Black was an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
. From 1983 to 1986, he was an Assistant Prof. of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
.
In 1986, Black was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
. In 1986 and 1989, Black was a UGA Exchange Professor at Universitaire, Instelling Antwerpen, Antwerp, in Belgium. In 1990, Black was a Visiting Professor at Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
. In 2003, Black was promoted to Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
.
Books
- The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991)
- The Reality Effect: Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative (Routledge, 2002), iix + 286pp.
Chapters, Articles, and Essays
- "Scientific Models," in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (Volume 5: Romanticism), ed. Marshall Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 115-137.
- "Literature as Secret History," in Literatur im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, eds. Manfred Schmeling, Monika Schmitz-Emans, and Kerst Walstra (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), pp. 83-97.
- "The Genealogy of Violence in African-American Literature: Non-Native Sources of Native Son," in The Conscience of Humankind: Literature and Traumatic Experience (Vol. 3 of the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Congress of the International Comparative Literature AssociationInternational Comparative Literature AssociationThe International Comparative Literature Association - ICLR) founded in 1954 is an international organization for international research in the field of comparative literature....
), ed. Elrud Ibsch (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 325-36. - "Literature, Film and Virtuality: Technology's Cutting Edge," in Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics and Death, eds. James E. Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray (London: Continuum, 2002), pp.78-88.
- "Real(ist) Horror: From Execution Videos to Snuff Films," in Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon,, eds. Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider (London: Wallflower Press, 2002).
- "(De)feats of Detection: The Spurious Key Text from Poe to Eco," in Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism, eds. P. Merivale and S. E. Sweeney. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 75-98.
- "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History," in Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity, eds. David Larmour, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 42-60.
- "Writing After Murder (and Before Suicide): The Confessions of Werther and Rivière," in Reading After Foucault: Institutions, Disciplines, and Technologies of the Self, 1750-1830, ed. Robert Leventhal (Wayne State University Press, 1994), pp. 233-59.
- "The Hermeneutics of Extinction: Denial and Discovery in Scientific Literature," Comparative Criticism 13: Literature and Science, ed. E. S. Shaffer (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 147-69.
- "Mixed Signals in the Body Languages of Sexual, Commercial, and Extraterrestrial Discourse," in Mimesis, Semiosis, and Power, ed. R. Bogue (John Benjamins, 1991), pp. 157-83.
- "Newtonian Mechanics and the Romantic Rebellion: Introduction," in Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature, ed. Joseph W. Slade and Judith Yaross Lee (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1990), pp. 131-39.
- "Confession, Digression, Gravitation: Thomas De Quincey's German Connection," in Thomas De Quincey: Bicentenary Studies, ed. Robert L. Snyder (University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 308-37.
- "Paper Empires of the New World: Pynchon, Gaddis, Fuentes," Proceedings of the Tenth Congress of the International Comparative Literature AssociationInternational Comparative Literature AssociationThe International Comparative Literature Association - ICLR) founded in 1954 is an international organization for international research in the field of comparative literature....
(New York: Garland, 1985), vol. 3, pp. 68-75. - "The Paper Empires and Empirical Fictions of William Gaddis," reprinted in In Recognition of William Gaddis, eds. John Kuehl and Steven Moore (Syracuse University Press, 1984), pp. 162- 73.
- "Idolology: The Model in Artistic Practice and Critical Theory," in Mimesis in Contemporary Theory, Vol. 1: The Literary and Philosophical Debate (John Benjamins, 1984), pp. 172-200.
- "Aesthetics of Gender: Winckelmann, Friedrich Schlegel, and the Hermaphroditic Ideal," ch. 14 in Fragments: Incompletion & Discontinuity, ed. L. Kritzman (New York Literary Forum 8-9, [1981]), pp. 189-209.
Articles in Journals
- "Freud, Moses, and the Death of Rabin," Mortality 7, no. 1 (2002), pp.83-95.
- "Psyche's Progress: Soul- and Self-making from Keats to Wilde," Intertexts 5, no.1 (2001), pp. 7-22.
- "Grisham's Demons," College Literature 25.1 (Winter 1998), pp. 35-40.
- "'You Must Remember This': The Intimate and the Obscene in Filmic Narrative," Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 40 (1992), pp. 83-89.
- "The Scientific Essay and Encyclopedic Science," Stanford Literature Review, 1:1 (Spring 1984), pp. 119-48.
- "Pynchon's Eve of De-struction," Pynchon Notes 14 (Feb. 1984), pp. 23-38.
- "The Paper Empires and Empirical Fictions of William Gaddis," The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 22-31.
- "Levana: Levitation in Jean Paul and Thomas De Quincey," Comparative Literature, 32 (Winter 1980), pp. 42-62.
- "Probing a Post-Romantic Paleontology: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow," Boundary 2, 8:2 (Winter 1980), pp. 229-54.
Review Articles
- "Murder: The State of the Art," American Literary History 12, no. 4 (winter 2000), pp.780-93.
- Review of The Changes of Cain by Ricardo J. Quinones, The Comparatist, 17 (May 1993), pp. 141-45.
- "Romanticism and the Sciences," (review of Romanticism and the Sciences, Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, eds.), Studies in Romanticism, 31 (Fall 1992), pp. 394-401.
- "Postmodernist Fictions" (review of Postmodernist Fiction by Brian McHale), Pynchon Notes, 18-19 (Spring-Fall 1986), pp. 96-109.
- "The Literature of Play and the Literature of Power" (Literature, Mimesis and Play by M. Spariosu), Poetics Today, 4:4 (1983), pp. 773-82.
- "Allegory Unveiled" (review of Stephen GreenblattStephen GreenblattStephen Jay Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar.Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term...
, ed., Allegory and Representation, and Morton W. Bloomfield, ed., Allegory, Myth and Symbol), Poetics Today, 4:1 (Winter 1983), pp. 109-26. - "Rhetorical Questions and Critical Riddles" (review of Paul de ManPaul de ManPaul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s...
, Allegories of Reading), Poetics Today, 1:4 (Summer 1980), pp. 189-201.
Reviews
- Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Milan V. Dimić, eds., Comparative Literature Now: Theories and Practice, in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 27:1-2 (2002), pp. 307-11.
- Ben Stoltzfus, Lacan and Literature: Purloined Pretexts, in The Comparatist, vol. 22 (May 1998), pp. 194-96. .
- Michael Felske, Zukünftige Vergangenheit: Thomas De Quinceys Suspiria de Profundis als natalteleologische Autobiographie, European Romantic Review 8, no. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 209-13.
- Sarah Webster Goodwin and Elisabeth Bronfen, eds. Death and Representation, in Victorian Studies, 39:1 (Autumn 1995), pp. 77-79.
- George Levine, ed., Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature, and Culture, in Philosophy and Literature, 18:1 (April 1994), pp. 187- 89.
- Eduardo González, The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and Performance in Latin American Fiction, MLN, 107:5 (Dec. 1992), pp. 1064-67).
- Herbert Lindenberger, The History in Literature: On Value, Genre, Institutions, in The Wordsworth Circle 22: 4 (Fall 1991), 228-30.
- John Johnston's Carnival of Repetition: Gaddis's The Recognitions and Postmodern Theory, in MLN, 105:5 (December 1990), pp. 1120-24.
- Virgil Nemoianu, The Taming of Romanticism: European Literature and the Age of Biedermeier, in Philosophy and Literature, 10:1 (April 1986), pp. 133-35.
- Renate Jurzik, Der Stoff des Lachens: Studien über Komik, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, 64:3 (1986), pp. 595-97.
- Frederick Garber, The Autonomy of the Self from Richardson to Huysmans, in Comparative Literature Studies, 20: 4 (Winter 1983), pp. 450-53.