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)

Contact

  • Academic
    woloch@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: English Position: Professor
    • BLDG. #460, Rm. 307
    • Stanford,  California  94305-2087 
    (650) 725-0755 (fax)

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 2087

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Character Insecurity in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century Novel Woloch, A. edited by Levine, C., Ortiz-Robles, M. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 2011
  • Partial Representation The Work of Genre: Selected Papers from the English Institute Woloch, A. edited by Warhol, R. Cambridge MA: English Institute in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies. 2011
  • A New Foreword Enemies of Promise Woloch, A., Connolly, C. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 2008
  • Section of Chapter One, “Narrative Asymmetry in 'Pride and Prejudice'" Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice': Modern Critical Interpretations Woloch, A. edited by Bloom, H. New York: Chelsea House. 2007
  • Minor Characters The Novel Woloch, A. edited by Moretti, F. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2006
  • Break Ups and Reunions: Late Realism in Early Sayles Sayles Talk: Essays on Independent Filmmaker John Sayles Woloch, A. edited by Kenaga, H., Carson, D. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 2005
  • The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel Woloch, A. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003
  • Toward a Theory of the Minor Character Il Romanzo Woloch, A. edited by Moretti, F. Milan: Editore Einaudi. 2003
  • Whose Freud?: The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture edited by Brooks, P., Woloch, A. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000