David R. Sherman

Associate Professor of English

Departments/Programs

Comparative Humanities
Comparative Literature
English
Health: Science, Society, and Policy

Degrees

New York University, Ph.D.
New York University, M.A.
University of California, Berkeley, B.A.

Expertise

Global modernism, elegy and the politics of commemoration, public sphere theory, comedy, literature in the criminal justice system, literature and philosophy

Profile

David Sherman's research explores modernist literature and culture. In a Strange Room: Modernism's Corpses and Mortal Obligation (2015) addresses literary responses to the sea-change in mortuary and mourning practices during the early twentieth century. He is currently writing a book about literary engagement with secularization, The Machine Stops: Modernism, Human Fungibility, and the Critique of Secular Hope. His other interests include narrative comedy, the politics of elegy, public sphere theory, and the role of literature in the criminal justice system.

Courses Taught

COML	117a	Magical Realism and Modern Myth
ENG	58a	Literature and Medicine
ENG	60a	Storytelling Performance
ENG	78a	Virginia Woolf
ENG	107b	Literary Witnessing and the Poetics of Memory
ENG	126b	Joyce's Ulysses
ENG	131a	Comedy: Literature, Film, and Theory
ENG	148a	Inventing Farewell: A Practicum on Elegy
ENG	161a	Literature and Counterculture
ENG	180b	Romantic Comedy / Matrimonial Tragedy
ENG	200a	Approaches to Literary and Cultural Studies
ENG	257b	Modernism's Broken Worlds
ENG	350a	Proseminar
GSAS	301d	Interdisciplinary Prospectus Seminar
HUM/UWS	2a	Crime and Punishment: Justice and Criminality from Plato to Serial

Awards and Honors

James T. Arthur Dissertation Fellowship for the Study of Time, New York University (2002 - 2003)

Lind American Literature Fellowship, New York University (2001)

Molberger Fellowship, New York University (2001)

Scholarship

Sherman, David R.. "Chaplin Boxing." Modernism / modernity Print Plus Platform volume 3. cycle 4 (2019)

Sherman, David R.. "“Stransom's Secular Altar, or, James's Pragmatics of Dying”." The Henry James Review 37. 3 (2017): 207-217.

Sherman, David R.. "“Woolf’s Secular Imaginary”." Modernism / modernity 23. 4 (2017): 711-732.

Sherman, David R. "'The Being that Thinks in Us': Woolf and the Aesthetics of Self-Alarm." Le Tour Critique 2. (2014): 369-377.

Sherman, David R. In a Strange Room: Modernism's Corpses and Mortal Obligation. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Sherman, David R. "Derek Walcott's 'A Far Cry from Africa' and 'Midsummer'." The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to the Present. 2009.

Sherman, David R.. ""Is Narrative Fundamental?" Beckett's Levinasian Question in Malone Dies." Journal of Modern Literature 32. 4 (2009).

Sherman, David R. "Elegy under the Knife: Geoffrey Hill and the Ethics of Sacrifice." Twentieth-Century Literature 54.2. (2008).

Sherman, David R. "A Plot Unraveling into Ethics: Woolf, Levinas, and 'Time Passes.'." Woolf Studies Annual 13. (2007).

Sherman, David R. "Burial Plots, Inoperative Community, and Faulkner's As I lay Dying." Theory@Buffalo 11. (2007).

Sherman, David R. and Fritz, Holly. "The Academic Job Crisis and the Small Schools Movement." MLA Profession (2001).