Mark Greif

Mark Greif’s scholarly work looks at the connections of literature to intellectual and cultural history, the popular arts, aesthetics and everyday ethics. He taught at the New School and Brown before coming to Stanford.
He is the author of The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973 (Princeton, 2015), which received the Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas, and the Susanne M. Glasscock Prize for interdisciplinary humanities scholarship. His book Against Everything: Essays (Pantheon, 2016) was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in Criticism. His current book concerns the history and aesthetics of pornography from the eighteenth century to the internet age.
In 2003, Greif was a founder of the journal n+1, and has been a principal member of the organization since. His books as co-editor and co-author have included The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street (n+1/FSG, 2012), Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America (Verso, 2011), and What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (n+1/HarperCollins, 2010). His books and articles have been translated into German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
He has been a Marshall Scholar, and has received fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.
Greif has written for publications including the London Review of Books, New York Times, Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Le Monde, and his essays have been selected for Best American Essays and the Norton Anthology. He remains interested in the relationships between high scholarship, literary and arts journalism, low culture, and small magazines.
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Courses
Spring 2022-2023
Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective
Autumn 2022-2023
The Civilizing Process
Spring 2021-2022
Aesthetics and the Audience: Literary Landmarks
Autumn 2020-2021
The Civilizing Process
Winter 2019-2020
Modern "Meanings of Life": Aestheticism, Perfectionism, Ecstasy
Autumn 2019-2020
Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts Core Seminar (DLCL 333, MUSIC 332, PHIL 333)
Autumn 2019-2020
Environmental and Animal Masterpieces
Autumn 2018-2019
Modern "Meanings of Life": Aestheticism, Perfectionism, Ecstasy
Winter 2018-2019
Contemporary Novel in U.S. Perspective (AMSTUD 177)