New Faculty Publications in the Department of English

November 6, 2019

This year, Norman Finkelstein, Graley Herren, and Kristen Renzi, all faculty in the Department of English, published new books. Their work spans multiple genres, each bringing new light, imagination, and critical analysis to different literary themes. Use the links below to learn more about their work and read about the warm reception each book is receiving.

If you would like to join in the celebration of these publications, please join the Department of English on Wednesday, November 13 at 3:30 PM on the first floor of the McDonald Library. The authors will sign copies and speak about their books.

Norman Finkelstein, Professor of English
Like a Dark Rabbi: Modern Poetry and the Jewish Literary Imagination

"Finkelstein, described as “one of American poetry’s indispensable makers” (Lawrence Joseph), whose previous critical work has been called “the exemplary study of the religious aspect of the works of contemporary American poets” (Peter O’Leary), considers large literary and cultural trends while never losing sight of the particular formal powers of individual poems. In Like a Dark Rabbi, he offers a passionate argument for the importance of Jewish-American poetry to modern Jewish culture, and to American poetry more broadly, as it engages with the contradictions of contemporary life." (Source: Hebrew Union College Press)

Graley Herren, Professor of English
The Self-Reflexive Art of Don DeLillo

“Graley Herren provides accessible, elegant proof of yet another set of themes and methods woven into DeLillo's astoundingly intricate art. Through close analysis of both well-known and underappreciated texts, Herren reveals how the multifaceted metaphor of mirrors has served DeLillo in fascinating, virtually innumerable ways, and that his self-reflexive depictions of artists and the creative process constitute a career-long argument for the salvific potential of art itself.” – Tim Engles, Professor of English, Eastern Illinois University, USA, and author of White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature (2018)

Kristen Renzi, Associate Professor of English
An Ethic of Innocence: Pragmatism, Modernity, and Women’s Choice Not to Know

An Ethic of Innocence examines representations of women in American and British fin-de-siècle and modern literature who seem “not to know” things. These naïve fools, Pollyannaish dupes, obedient traditionalists, or regressive anti-feminists have been dismissed by critics as conservative, backward, and out of sync with, even threatening to, modern feminist goals. Grounded in the late nineteenth century’s changing political and generic representations of women, this book provides a novel interpretative framework for reconsidering the epistemic claims of these women. Kristen L. Renzi analyzes characters from works by Henry James, Frank Norris, Ann Petry, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and others, to argue that these feminine figures who choose not to know actually represent and model crucial pragmatic strategies by which modern and contemporary subjects navigate, survive, and even oppose gender oppression. (Source: Suny Press)