Center for the Study of the Novel
The Center for the Study of the Novel promotes conversation on the novel and related narrative genres as these forms have been practiced across history and cultures. CSN is committed to the importance of studying literature as a primary form of human expression, even as it examines what interdisciplinary perspectives may tell us about literature and the novel in particular. CSN further is committed to studying the history and practice of literary criticism and theory illuminating the novel and its relations to society and culture.
Objects of inquiry include long prose fictions, the powerful cultural role played by the novel, oral forms and their relation to print culture, as well as the expansion of narrative into newer media, such as cinema and digital technologies. We attend to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of the novel and ask how the literary aspects of the novel are shaped by extra-literary contexts and other artistic paradigms. Even as CSN devotes significant attention to major works of the novelistic canon, we also study forgotten and poetically devalued novels, including those that are situated at, and help to define, the boundaries of the genre.
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Past Events
Please join us on Monday, February 8th for the Center for the Study of the Novel’s third book launch event of the year.
Please join us on Friday, January 15th for the Center for the Study of the Novel’s second book launch event of the year.
We will be hosting Ximena Briceno, Lecturer of Latin American Literature and Culture at Stanford University, who will be presenting on “Amphibian Encounters: Del Toro through…
We are delighted to have at the Working Group on the Novel Maciej Kurzynski, PhD candidate in the East Asian Languages and Cultures and recipient of the Stanford Interdisciplinary…
Respondent: Margaret Cohen, Professor of English, Stanford
Article Abstract:
Chiara Giovanni, Comparative Literature, Prospectus
Respondent: Diana Looser, Assistant Professor in Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford
Respondent: Thomas Ardel, Professor and chair of LGBT Studies at CCSF
Paper abstract
Respondent: Lisa Surwillo, Professor and Chair of ILAC, Stanford
Abstract of the Dissertation Project:
Respondent: Elizabeth Kessler, American Studies
Abstract of the Dissertation Project:
Introduction
Lisa Zunshine
The Narrative Brain: What we Remember and Learn from Stories.
Fritz Breithaupt