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Geoffrey Galt Harpham

Education
B.A., Northwestern Univ., 1968
Ph.D., UCLA, 1974 (Modern British and American Literature)
        Dissertation on "Cultural Degeneration and the Grotesque in H. G. Wells and Jack London,"
        John Espey, Director

Positions Held
Professor, Department of English, Tulane University, 1988-present
Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 1989-present
Associate Professor, Department of English, Tulane University, 1986-88
Andrew Mellon Scholar, Department of English and American Literature,
Brandeis University, 1983-86
Visiting Lecturer, MIT, 1985-86
Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 1978-79
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania,
    1976-83
Lecturer, Department of Literature, UC San Diego, 1975-76
Lecturer, Department of English, UCLA, 1975
Lecturer, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara, 1973-74
  Major University and Professional Service Founder and Director, Graduate Program in Literary Theory, Tulane University, 1987-92
         (responsibilities included arranging cross-departmental seminars, planning curriculum
         development, inviting speakers, organizing conferences)
Chair, Committee for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education, Tulane University, 1990- 92
         (university-wide committee charged with restructuring undergraduate education as part of Tulane's
         Strategic Plan for the '90's)
Organizer, Conference on “Constructions of Gender and Sexuality,” Tulane University, October, 1991
Coordinator, nationwide book drive for University of Bucharest, 1990-91
Executive Committee, Society for Cinema Studies, New Orleans, LA, 1992-93
Internal Review Committee, Tulane University Graduate Programs in Science, 1994
Chair, Promotions and Tenure Committee, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Tulane University, 1995-96
Director, Seminar on Graduate Study in Literature, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation,
        Tulane University, Summer 1996 and 1997
Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, Tulane University, 1996-97
Chair, Committee for Administrative Review of the Dean of Tulane College, 1996
Chair, Search Committee, Department of African-Diaspora Studies / Department of English,
        Tulane University, 1996
Chair, Department of English, Tulane University, 1997-2000
Faculty Associate, International School of Theory in the Humanities, Santiago de Compostela,
        Spain, 1997-2000
Chair, University-wide Committee on Faculty Evaluation and Rewards Systems,
        Tulane University, 1998-2000.  [ http://www.tulane.edu/~usenate/Reports/ ]
Advisory Board, Murphy Institute of Political Economy, Tulane University, 2000-01
Task Force for creation of a Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane, 2000-01
 
Awards and Honors
Regents' Graduate Fellowship (four years), UCLA, 1968-72
National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, 1978-79 (spent at Clare Hall,
        Cambridge University)
ACLS Study Fellowship, 1980-81 (to study art history and aesthetic theory with Leo Steinberg)
J. S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1989 (spent at Clare Hall)
Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for best essay to appear in Southern Humanities Review, 1989
Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Tulane University, 1991
National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, 1994-95
Grant, Andrew Mellon Foundation, to lead seminar for advanced graduate
        students in literary studies, 1996, 1997
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, Tulane University, 1997
Andrew F. Mellon Professor, Tulane University, 1999
President’s Award for Excellence in Research, Tulane University, 2000
 
Publications
 I.  Books
    On the Grotesque:  Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature , Princeton University
        Press, 1982 (paperback, 1986).
        This work was the primary inspiration for “Domus Aurea,” a composition by Edmund Campion
        for piano and vibraphone, which premiered at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 November 2000.

    The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (University of Chicago Press, 1987; paperback,
        1992) 

    Getting It Right:  Language, Literature, and Ethics (University of Chicago Press, 1992) 

    One of Us:  The Mastery of Joseph Conrad (University of Chicago Press, 1996, paperback) 

    Shadows of Ethics:  Criticism and the Just Society (Duke University Press, 1999, paperback).
 
II.  Articles, Review-Essays, etc.
1.  “The Incompleteness of Beardsley's Venus and Tannhäuser,” English Literature in Transition 18.1
(1975):  24-32. 

2.  “Jack London and the Tradition of Superman Socialism,” American Studies 16.1 (1975):  23-33.

3. “The Grotesque:  First Principles,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34.4 (1976):  461-78.

4. “Time Running Out:  The Edwardian Sense of Cultural Degeneration,” Clio 5.3 (1976):  283-301.

5.  “Minority Report:  Tono-Bungay and the Shape of Wells’s Career,” Modern Language Quarterly
39.1 (1978):  50-62.

6.  “Survival in and of The Painted Bird,” The Georgia Review 35.1 (1981): 142-57.

7.  “The Grotesque and the Limits of Representation,” Annals of Scholarship 2.3 (1982):  33-48.

8.  “E. L. Doctorow and the Technology of Narrative,” PMLA 100.1 (1985):  81-95.  Reprinted in
Harold Bloom, ed., E. L. Doctorow:  Critical Views (Philadelphia:  Chelsea House, 2002):  27-50. 

9.  “The Language of Longing,” review-essay of Susan Stewart, On Longing:  Narratives of the
Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1984), Raritan 4.4
(1985): 107-14.

10.  “The Fertile Word:  Augustine and Hermeneutics,” Criticism 38.3 (1986):  237-54.

11.  “Short Stack:  The Stories of Breece Pancake,” Studies in Short Fiction 23.3 (1986):  265-74.

12.  “Language, History, and Ethics,” review-essay on Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy (Harvard Univ. Press, 1985); and J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading (Columbia Univ.
Press, 1986), Raritan 7 (1987) 1:  128-46.

13.  “Rhetoric and the Madness of Philosophy in Plato and Pirsig,” Contemporary Literature 29 (1988) 1: 
64-88.

14.  “Foucault and the ‘Ethics’ of Power,” in Robert Merrill, ed., Ethics / Aesthetics:  Postmodern
 Positions (Maisonneuve Press, 1988):  71-82.

15.  “Conversion and the Language of Autobiography,” in James Olney, ed., Studies in Autobiography
(Oxford Univ. Press, 1988):  42-51.

16.  “Valuemania,” review-essay of Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value:  Alternative
Perspectives for Critical Theory (Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), Raritan 9.1 (1989):  134-50.

17.  “Fish on Blind Submission,” PMLA 104.2 (1989):  215-16.

18.  “Ethics and the Double Standard of Criticism,” Southern Humanities Review 23 (1989) 4:  343-58.
(Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award)

19.  “Response to Barbara Herrnstein Smith,” Raritan  9.4 (1990):  146-50.

20.  “Derrida and the Ethics of Criticism,” Textual Practice 5.3 (1991):  382-98.

21.  “Foucault and the New Historicism,” review-essay of H. Aram Veeser, ed., The New Historicism
(Routledge, 1989); and Jonathan Arac, ed., After Foucault (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988), American
Literary History 3.2 (1991):  361-75.

22.  “The Future and Literary Theory,” review-essay of Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign (Oklahoma
Univ. Press, 1988); Ellen Rooney, Seductive Reasoning (Cornell Univ. Press, 1989); and Ralph Cohen,
ed., The Future of Literary Theory (Routledge, 1989), Modern Philology 89.1 (1991):   8-24.

23.  “Abroad Only by a Fiction:  Creation, Irony, and Necessity in Conrad’s The Secret Agent,”
Representations 37 (1992):  79-103.

24.  “Old Water in New Bottles:  The Contemporary Prospects for the Study of Asceticism,” Semeia 58
(1992):  135-48.

25.  “Aesthetics and the Fundamentals of Modernity,” in George Levine, ed., Aesthetics and Ideology
(Rutgers Univ. Press, 1994):  124-49.

26.  “So . . . What Is Enlightenment?  An Inquisition into Modernity,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1994) 3: 
524-56.

27.  “Asceticism and the Compensations of Art,” in Vincent Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds.,
Asceticism (Oxford Univ. Press, 1995):  357-68.

28.  “Ethics,” in Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, eds., Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd
edition (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995):  387-405.

29.  “Of Rats and Men; or, Reason in Our Time,” Raritan 14 (Spring 1995) 4: 88-114.

30.  “Late Jameson,” Salmagundi 111 (Summer 1996):  213-32.

31.  “The Business of Mourning,” The Southern Review 32 (Summer 1996) 3:  537-55.  Reprinted in
Eva Paulino Beuno, Terry Caesar, and William Hummel, eds., Naming the Father;  Legacies,
Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature
(Lexington Books, 2000):  13-28.

32.  “Freedom and Submission.”  On Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, vol. 1 of The
Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, ed., Paul Rabinow (New Press, 1997), The Boston 
Book Review 4 (July-August 1997) 6: 6.

33.  “The Order of Things.”  On Michel Foucault, Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, vol. II of The
Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-84, ed., James Faubion (The New Press, 1997), The Boston
Book Review 5 (April 1998) 3: 26-27.

34.  “Once Again:  Geoffrey Hartman on Culture,” Raritan 18 (Fall 1998) 2: 146-66.

35.  “On ‘Consequences,’” in H. Aram Veeser, ed., The Stanley Fish Reader, Blackwell, 1998: 86-87.

36.  “Chomsky and the Rest of Us,” Salmagundi, Winter-Spring 121-122 (1999): 211-37.

37.  “Imagining the Centre,” in Critical Ethics:  Text, Theory and Responsibility, eds., Dominic Rainsford
and Tim Woods (Macmillan, 1999):  37-52.

38.  “Ascetics, Aesthetics, and the Management of Desire,” in Susan Mizruchi, ed., Religion and Cultural
Studies (Princeton University Press, 2001):  95-109.

39.  “The End of Theory, the Rise of the Profession:  A Rant,” in Donald Hall, ed., Professions: 
Conversations on the Future of Literary and Cultural Studies (University of Illinois Press, 2001): 
186-201.

40.  “Elaine Scarry and the Dream of Pain,” Salmagundi 130-131 (Spring-Summer 2001):  202-34.

41.  “Ethics and Literary Criticism,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 9, ed., Christa
Knellwolf and Christopher Norris (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2001):  371-85.

42.  “Conrad’s Global Homeland,” Raritan 21 (Summer 2001) 1: 20-33.

43.  "Symbolic Terror," Critical Inquiry 28 (winter 2002) 2: 573-80; and (44) in Literary Research/ Recherche
littéraire 18 (winter 2001) 36: 262-68.

45.  “The Hunger of Martha Nussbaum,” Representations 77 (winter 2002): 52-81. 
 
 III.  Reviews
1. Mark Taylor, Erring:  A Postmodern A/theology (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984), Criticism 38.1
(1986):  117-20.

2.  Charles Newman, The Post-Modern Aura:  The Act of Fiction in an Age of Inflation (Northwestern
Univ. Press, 1985), The Georgia Review 40.4 (1986):  1033-36.

3.  Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, Forms of Violence:  Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture
(Schocken, 1985), Criticism 38.2 (1986):  232-36.

4.  Irving Massey, Find You the Virtue (George Mason Univ. Press, 1987), Philosophy and Literature
(1989).

5.  “Constraints, Not Consequences,” on Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally (Oxford Univ.
Press, 1990), The Times Literary  Supplement, 9-15 March 1990: 247.

6.  “The Triumph of Terminology,” on M. H. Abrams, Doing Things with Texts (W. W. Norton, 1989);
Thomas Docherty, After Theory:  Post Modernism \ Post Marxism (Routledge, 1990); and Frank Lentricchia
and Thomas McLaughlin, eds., Critical Terms for Literary Study (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), The
Times Literary Supplement, 17-23 August 1990: 872.

7.  “Postmodernism's Discontents,” on Christopher Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical
Theory (Blackwell, 1990); Norris, What's Wrong with Postmodernism (Hemel Hempstead, 1990); Bill
Readings, Introducing Lyotard (Routledge, 1991); and Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism (Verso, 1991), in The Times Literary Supplement , 28 June 1991: 6-7.  

8.  “Fascination without the Fascism,” on Donald Davie, Ezra Pound:  Chronicle and Polemic (Carcanet, 
1991), The Poetry Review, 81 (1992): 25-27.

9.  “The Ethical Backlash,” on Richard Freadman and Seumas Miller, eds., Re-thinking Theory:  A
Critique of Contemporary Literary Theory and an Alternative Account (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992);
David H. Hirsch, The Deconstruction of Literature:  Criticism after Auschwitz (New England Univ. Press,
1992); and Joseph F. Graham, Onomatopoetics: Theory of Language and Literature (Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1992), The Times Literary Supplement, 28 August 1992: 19.

10.  “The Cambridge Guide to Eng. Lit.,” on Nicholas Treadell, ed., Conversations with Critics (Carcanet, 
1994), The Poetry Review  (U.K.) 84 (Winter 1994-95) 4: 68-69.

11.  Rae Beth Gordon, Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century  French Literature
(Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), Philosophy and  Literature, 1995.

12.  “Who’s Who,” on Charles Altieri, Subjective Agency:  A Theory of First- Person Expressivity and
Its Social Implications (Blackwell 1994),  London Review of Books 20 April 1995:  12-13.

13.  “Reply to Charles Altieri,” London Review of Books 15 October 1995:  5.

14.  Charles Altieri, Subjective Agency (Blackwell, 1994), and Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps
(Vintage, 1994), Criticism XXXVII (1995) 4:  645-50.

15.  Eugene Goodheart, The Reign of Ideology (Columbia Univ. Press, 1997), Modern Fiction Studies 43
(Winter 1997) 4: 1076-78.

16.  Vincent Pecora, Households of the Soul (Johns Hopkins Univ.Press, 1997), Modern Philology 97
(February 2000) 3:  496-98.

17.  Henry Sussman, The Aesthetic Contract (Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), Modernism / Modernity 6
(September 1999) 3:  153-55.

18.  Elizabeth Grosz, ed., Becomings, in Literary Research/ Recherche littéraire 17 (Fall-Winter 2000)
34: 413-18.

19.  Judy Delin, The Language of Everyday Life (Sage Publications, 2000), in Language and Communication
22: 107-12.  
 
 IV.  Forthcoming
    “Architecture and Ethics:  16 Points,” in Architecture and Ethics , edited by Graham Howe;
                 forthcoming, 2002.
    “Doing the Impossible:  Slavoj Zizek and the End of Knowledge,” forthcoming in Critical
                 Inquiry, 2002.
    Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity, Routledge, 2002.
    "From Revolution to Canon:  On The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. "
 
V.  Work in Progress
    Review-essay on George Steiner’s Grammars of Creation for Salmagundi
    Playing Time:  A Year in Youth Sports
 
Selection of Papers Delivered since 1992
    “Aesthetics and the Fundamentals of Modernity,” Northwestern Univ.; International Association for
                Philosophy and Literature, Univ. of  California, Berkeley, 1992.
    “Language and the Inhuman,” International Conference on Narrative, SUNY Albany, 1993.
    “Asceticism and the Compensations of Art,” Conference on “The Ascetic    Dimension in Religious Life
                and Culture,” Union Theological   Seminary, New York, 1993; Centre for Criticism and
                Theory, Univ. of Western Ontario, March, 1994; Conference on Medieval Studies, Univ. of 
                  Western Michigan, May, 1994.
    “So . . . What is Enlightenment?  An Inquisition into Modernity,” The Tudor and  Stuart Club, The Johns
                Hopkins University, 1993; Centre for Criticism    and Theory, Univ. of Western Ontario, 1994.
    “Mourning Man in the Age of Language,” Tulane Univ. School of Architecture,  March, 1994.
    “Language and Mourning,” Conference on “The European Legacy,” Graz,  Austria, August, 1994.
    “On Serial Viewings of Natural Born Killers,” Loyola University, September,  1994.
    “Doctorow and the Undead,” South Central Modern Language Association, New Orleans, November
                1994.
    “Conrad, Master of the Language,” North Carolina State Univ., September, 1995.
    “History v. Interpretation,” plenary address to conference on “History and the Limits of Interpretation”
                at Rice University, March, 1996
    “Imagining the Center:  Criticism and Responsibility,” plenary address to conference on “Literature and
                Ethics” at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, July, 1996; University of Zagreb, Croatia, May
                1998;  American University of Paris, May 1998; State University of New York at Buffalo,
                November 1998.
    “Truth in Many Worlds,” Doris Stone Colloquium, Tulane University, February,    1997.
    “Ideology and Critical Theory,” Department of Philosophy Colloquium, Tulane University, March,
                1997.
    “What Theory Can and Can’t Do,” University of New Orleans, April, 1997.
    “Mobility and Literary Study,” keynote address to a conference on “Social Moves,” Tulane University,
                November 1997.
    “Philosophy Looking for Love,” American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 1997.
    “History and the Limits of Interpretation,” plenary address, conference on The Histories of Theory,
                University of Western Ontario, April 1998.
    “Literature and National Consciousness,” University of Osijek, Croatia, May 1998.
    “The ‘Dark Places of the Earth,’” University of Osijek, Croatia, May 1998.
    “Towards an Ethics of Literature,” University of Osijek, Croatia, May 1998.
    “Chomsky and the Limits of Construction,” SCMLA, November 1998.
    “Culture from the Point of View of Society,” Presidential Panel, SCMLA, November 1998.
    “Language Does Not Exist,” Mellon Address, Tulane University, March 1999.
    “Criticism and Social Responsibility,” Benson Lecture, Auburn University, May 1999.
    “The Death of Theory, the Rise of the Profession,” Syracuse University, April 1999.
    “Language and Humanity,” University of California at Berkeley, February, 2000.
    “Architecture and Ethics:  16 Points,” Harrison Symposium, Tulane University, 2000.
    “Lord Jim and the Homeland,” MLA, Washington, D.C., 2000.
    “Reading The Phaedrus as Literature,” MLA, Washington, D. C., 2000.   
 
Selection of Courses Taught in Recent Years
Undergraduate
        Conrad, Hardy, and Lawrence
        The Global Avant-Garde in Fiction
        Freud and Fictionality
        The Culture of Modernism (two semesters)
        The Theory, Practice, and Ethics of War (a course I designed and taught with contributions
                from members of eight other departments)
        Modern British Fiction
        Fictions of the University
        British Literature Survey, 1798-present
        Romantic Excess (Senior Seminar)
        Imagining Language (Honors Colloquium)
        Literature and Theory (senior capstone seminar) 

Graduate
        Introduction to Literary Theory
        The Ethics of Criticism:  Derrida, de Man, Foucault
        Theory and Ideology
        Joseph Conrad and Modernity
        Issues in Modernism and Modernity