Bio


Our language and our writing convey how we see. They also convey how we act: in an essay, for example, we model our ability to engage complexity, see through another's eyes and balance our passions and reasons. To study--and practice--new, experimental writing in the classroom is to discover better practices of seeing and acting. Such writing makes imaginative breakthroughs in perception and action possible. As a teacher and as a scholar, I am interested in how writing can foreclose possibilities but also allow for complexity, sympathy and significant change.

Gabrielle Moyer holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Stanford University and a BA in English and Art History from Wesleyan University. Her teaching and research interests include Modernist prose, the relationship between philosophical doubts and fictional style, ethics and epistemology. A primary question driving her work is how styles of reading and writing can help us countenance uncertainty and complexity--in others, in our choices and in our judgments.

She is completing a book titled "Sustained Collision: Modernist Style As a Form of Attention" which explores the relationship between fictions and practical dilemmas. She has published several articles ("Not Just Another Complexity" Rodopi Press, 2010; "Style As Endgame" Litteratur Internationale 2010, "Taking Ourselves for Poetry: An Essay on Love and the Hermeneutics of Attention" Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2008.)

Academic Appointments


  • PWR Advanced Lecturer, Writing and Rhetoric Studies

Administrative Appointments


  • Writing Specialist, Art and Art History Department (2014 - Present)
  • Instructor, Program in Writing and Rhetoric (2007 - Present)
  • Teaching Fellow, Program in Writing and Rhetoric (2005 - 2007)

Professional Education


  • PhD, Stanford University, English Literature (2005)
  • BA, Wesleyan University, English, Art History (1995)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


SPECIALIZATION: Poetics of Art History; The Relation of Ethics and Aesthetics; Analytic Philosophy; Essayism