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David R. Sherman

Associate Professor of English
David R. Sherman
davidsherman@brandeis.edu
781-736-8214
Rabb Graduate Center, 136

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 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
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).



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