Rachel Greenwald Smith, Ph.D.
Professor
Education
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
M.A., Rutgers University
Ph.D. Rutgers University
Research Interests
Contemporary literature and culture, politics and aesthetics, culture and capitalism, manifestos, democracy and authoritarianism, subcultures, theories of emotion and embodiment, the avant-garde.
For more information, please visit .
Publications and Media Placements
Books
, Graywolf Press, 2021.
Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Edited Collections
American Literature in Transition: 2000-2010, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture, ed. with Mitchum Huehls, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Selected Public Writing
鈥,鈥 The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2021.
鈥,鈥 The Yale Review, July 2021.
鈥,鈥 The Los Angeles Review of Books, July 2018.
鈥,鈥 The Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2018.
"," The Account, Fall 2014.
Selected Essays, Articles, and Book Chapters
Post45: Peer Reviewed, 鈥淗ow to Be Now?鈥 special issue ed. Sarah Chihaya, Joshua Kotin, and Kinohi Nishikawa,
July 2019.
鈥1980 - Present: The New Authoritarianism,鈥 Timelines in American Literature, ed. Christopher Hager and Cody Marrs, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.
鈥淭he Contemporary Novel and Post-Democratic Form,鈥 Novel: A Forum on Fiction 51:2 (2018).
鈥淢anifesto,鈥 American Literature in Transition: 1990-2000, ed. Stephen J. Burn, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
"Postmodernism and the Affective Turn," Twentieth-Century Literature 57:3 & 57:4 (Fall/Winter 2011).
"Materialism, Ecology, Aesthetics," Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group 25:2 (Winter 2011).
"Organic Shrapnel: Affect and Aesthetics in September 11 Fiction," American Literature 83:1 (March 2011).
"Ecology Beyond Ecology: Life After the Accident in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy," Mfs: Modern Fiction Studies 55:3 (Fall 2009).
Presentations
Invited Lectures and Symposia
鈥淣o Compromise: Affect, Affect, Polarization,鈥 sponsored by the Affect Studies Group and the Humanities Center, Washington University, September 2019.
鈥淲hat the Song Wants,鈥 Post45, Oxford, UK, November 2018.
鈥淎ltered by Force: Affect, Literary Form, and Authority,鈥滱ltered States: Mind, Embodiment, and Aesthetics, an international conference at the Sorbonne and the Institut National d鈥橦istoire de l鈥橝rt, Paris, June 2018.
鈥淒emagogues and Manifestos: Illiberal Forms and Liberal Democracy,鈥 keynote, A Changing Landscape: Shifting Borders and Slippery States, Graduate Student Conference in Literature, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, March 2018.
鈥淔uck the Avant-Garde,鈥 C21 Faculty Research Group, Washington University, October 2017.
鈥淎uthority and Form After Experimentalism,鈥 invited lecture, American Literature Colloquium, Harvard University, April 2016.
鈥淎natomy Lessons: Impersonal Feelings in 9/11 Fiction,鈥 Department of English, Carleton College, October 2015.
鈥淐ompromise Aesthetics,鈥 Northeast Americanist Collective Colloquium, Brown University, June 2014.
鈥淧ersonal and Impersonal: Affect, Contemporary Literary Form, and Neoliberalism,鈥 Americanist Group, English Department, University of Illinois 鈥 Urbana-Champaign, April 2014.
鈥淚mpersonal Feelings,鈥 Post45, Stanford University, November 2012.
鈥淣eoliberalism and the Aesthetics of Self-Care,鈥 University of Missouri Department of English Research Symposium, Columbia, MO, September 2011.
鈥淎ffect, Aesthetics, and September 11 Fiction,鈥 keynote address for The Annual Humanities Symposium, Point Park University, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2010.
Selected Conference Presentations
Organizer, 鈥淟egacies of the Avant-Garde,鈥 Roundtable, Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.
Respondent, 鈥淭he Work of Feeling in the Age of Deindustrialization,鈥 Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.
鈥淭he Missouri Compromise,鈥 The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, College Park, MD, October 2019.
鈥淐ompromise Aesthetics,鈥 Reading in the Age of Trump: The Politics and Possibility of Literary Criticism Now, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany, May 2019.
鈥淭he Poem Itself,鈥 Living With Others: Conscience, Coercion, and Freedom, St. Louis, MO, Washington University, January 2019.
Organizer and participant, Seminar on Literary Form and Political Efficacy, The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, New Orleans, LA, October 2018.
Organizer, 鈥淐ompromise or Conflict: Literary Form Now鈥 Roundtable, Modern Language Association, New York, NY, January 2018.
鈥淭iny Books of the Resistance,鈥 Modern Language Association, New York, NY, January 2018.
鈥淚 Love Chris Kraus: A Response,鈥 The Association for the Study of Arts of the Present, Oakland, CA, October 2017.
鈥淟iberalism and the Author Problem,鈥 The International Conference on Narrative, Lexington, KY, March 2017.
鈥淟iberal Pluralism and the Future of the Manifesto,鈥 The Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, CA, November 2016.
Organizer, 鈥淢odern/Contemporary鈥 Roundtable, The Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, CA, November 2016.
鈥淎uthoritarianism, Formalism, Neoliberalism,鈥 The Society for Novel Studies, Pittsburgh, PA, May 2016.
鈥淎uthoritarianism and Contemporary Literary Form,鈥 The Contemporary: Culture in the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University, March 2016.