Alex Woloch

Bio

Alex Woloch received his B.A. and PhD in Comparative Literature. He teaches and writes about literary criticism, narrative theory, the history of the novel, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. He is the author of The One vs. The Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel (Princeton UP, 2003), which attempts to reestablish the centrality of characterization — the fictional representation of human beings — within narrative poetics. He is also the author of Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism (Harvard UP, 2016), which takes up the literature-and-politics question through a close reading of George Orwell’s generically experimental non-fiction prose. A new book in progress, provisionally entitled Partial Representation, will consider the complicated relationship between realism and form in a variety of media, genres and texts. This book will focus on the paradoxical ways in which form is at once necessary, and inimical, to representation. Woloch is also the co-editor, with Peter Brooks of Whose Freud?: The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (Yale UP, 2000).

Academic Appointments

• Professor, English
• Professor (By courtesy), Comparative Literature

Administrative Appointments

• Professor, Department of English, Stanford University (2015 - Present)
• Department Chair, English Department, Stanford University (2015 - Present)
• Associate Professor, Department of English, Stanford University, Stanford CA (2005 - 2015)
• Assistant Professor, Department of English, Stanford University, Stanford CA (1999 - 2005)
• Director, Undergraduate Studies, English Department, Stanford University (2001 - 2003)
• Director, Undergraduate Studies, English Department, Stanford University (2004 - 2006)
• Co-Chair, Search Committee in British Literature, English Department, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
• Director, Honors Program, English Department, Stanford University (2008 - 2010)
• Director, Graduate Studies, English Department, Stanford University (2011 - Present)

Honors & Awards

• Sonya Rudikoff Memorial Prize, Best First Book in Victorian Studies, Northeast Victorian Studies Association (2003)
• Richard E. Guggenhime Faculty Scholar, Stanford University (2013 - 2016)
• John T. Roberts Fellowship, Yale University (1992 - 1996)
• A. Bartlett Giamatti Supplemental Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University (1992 - 1994)
• Yale Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University (1996 - 1997)
• Exchange Scholar, Ecole Normale Supérieure (1995 - 1996)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

• Member, Editorial Board, Nineteenth-Century Literature (2008 - 2013)
• Member, Executive Committee, Division on Prose Fiction, Modern Languages Association (2009 - 2014)
• Member, Advisory Board, Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel, ed. Peter Logan (2006 - 2010)
• Reader, Book Manuscript Submissions
• Reader, Oxford University Press
• Reader, Princeton University Press
• Reader, Columbia University Press
• Reader, Article Submissions, Comparative Literature
• Reader, Article Submissions, Studies in English Literature
• Chair, Graduate Studies Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Member, Department Advisory Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Member, Curriculum Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Member, Graduate Admissions Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Chair, Undergraduate Studies Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Member, Department Advisory Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Member, Curriculum Committee, English Department, Stanford University
• Elected Member, Department Advisory Committee, English Department, Stanford University (2007 - 2010)
• Member, Creative Planning Committee, English Department, Stanford University (2005 - 2006)
• Member, Creative Planning Committee, English Department, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
• Member, Undergraduate Studies Committee, English Department, Stanford University (1999 - 2001)
• Member, Graduate Student Admissions Committee, English Department, Stanford University (1999 - 2000)
• Member, Graduate Student Admissions, English Department, Stanford University (2005 - 2006)
• Director, Center for the Study of the Novel, Stanford University (2007 - 2010)
• Member, Steering Committee, Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Program, Stanford University (2005 - 2006)
• Member, Planning and Promotions Com., Div. of Languages, Literatures and Culture, (DLCL), Stanford U. (2005 - 2006)
• Co-Chair, Search Committee in British Literature, English Department, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
• Member, Mabelle-Mcleod Lewis Fellowship Committee, Stanford University (2006 - 2013)
• Member, Steering Committee, Modern Thought and Literature Program, Stanford University (2011 - 2012)

Program Affiliations

• Modern Thought and Literature

Professional Education

• B.A., Columbia College, New York, Comparative Literature (1992)
• M.Phil., Yale University, New Haven CT, Comparative Literature (1995)
• Ph.D., Yale University, New Haven CT, Comparative Literature (1998)