Gavin Jones
Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities
English
Bio
Gavin Jones is the author of Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America (U of California, 1999), American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945 (Princeton, 2007), Failure and the American Writer: A Literary History (Cambridge, 2014), and Reclaiming John Steinbeck: Writing for the Future of Humanity (Cambridge 2021). He has published articles on writers such as George W. Cable, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. DuBois, Sylvester Judd, Paule Marshall, Mark Twain, and Herman Melville, in journals including American Literary History, New England Quarterly, and African American Review. Jones has edited a new version of a neglected classic of American literature, Sylvester Judd's "transcendental novel," Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom (1845). He is also co-editing a much needed Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story, and is beginning a new project titled The Secret History of the Short Story.
Academic Appointments
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Professor, English
Administrative Appointments
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Chair, Department of English, Stanford University (2011 - 2015)
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Professor of English, Stanford University (2008 - Present)
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Associate Professor of English, Stanford University (2004 - 2008)
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Assistant Professor of English, Stanford University (1999 - 2004)
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Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University (1996 - 1999)
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Lecturer in American Literature, University of Sheffield (1996 - 1996)
Honors & Awards
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Violet Andrews Whittier Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center (2010-2011)
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Stanford Fellow, Stanford University (2006-2008)
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Gordon and Dailey Pattee Faculty Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University (2005-2006)
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Undergraduate Teaching Award of Phi Beta Kappa, Beta of California at Stanford University (2004)
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Research Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center (2001-2002)
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Outstanding Academic Title Award, for Strange Talk, Choice Magazine (2000)
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Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Graduate Prize Fellowship, Princeton University Center for Human Values (1994-1995)
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Degree Prize, Keble College, Oxford University (1990)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
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Pre-Major Advisor, Stanford University (2011 - Present)
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CAPER, Stanford University (2011 - 2012)
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Member, Stanford Humanities Center Executive Committee, Stanford University (2009 - 2013)
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Faculty member, Board of Judicial Affairs, Stanford University (2009 - 2010)
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Editorial board member, American Literature (2008 - 2011)
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Vice Chair, English Department, Stanford University (2008 - 2010)
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Co-chair Stanford Fellows, Stanford University (2007 - 2008)
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Chair of the selection committee, American Studies Association’s Constance Rourke Prize (2005 - 2005)
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Resident Fellow, Junipero House, Wilbur Hall, Stanford University (2003 - 2008)
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Faculty Coordinator, “American Cultures” Mellon Graduate Student Research Workshop (2001 - 2005)
Program Affiliations
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American Studies
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Modern Thought and Literature
Professional Education
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B.A, Oxford University, English Language and Literature (1990)
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M.A., Princeton University, English (1993)
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Ph.D., Princeton University, English (1996)
2024-25 Courses
- American Moderns: Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, & Fitzgerald
AMSTUD 46N, ENGLISH 46N (Spr) - American Story Cycles
ENGLISH 316 (Spr) -
Independent Studies (4)
- Individual Work
AMSTUD 195 (Win) - Individual Work
ENGLISH 198 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Research Course
ENGLISH 398 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Revision and Development of a Paper
ENGLISH 398R (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
- Individual Work
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Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- Contemporary American Short Stories
AMSTUD 177B, ENGLISH 177B (Spr) - Gilded Age American Literature
ENGLISH 308B (Spr)
2022-23 Courses
- American Moderns: Hemingway, Hurston, Faulkner, & Fitzgerald
AMSTUD 46N, ENGLISH 46N (Win) - Contemporary American Short Stories
AMSTUD 177B, ENGLISH 177B (Spr) - Theory and Practice of the American Short Story
ENGLISH 307 (Win) - Zora Neale Hurston
AFRICAAM 189, AMSTUD 187, ENGLISH 187 (Spr)
2021-22 Courses
- Secret Lives of the Short Story
ENGLISH 146S (Spr) - Steinbeck
AMSTUD 146A, ENGLISH 146A (Spr)
- Contemporary American Short Stories
Stanford Advisees
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Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Kristian Ayala -
Doctoral Dissertation Advisor (AC)
Alan Burnett Valverde, Andrew Touma -
Doctoral (Program)
Lydia Burleson, Andrew Touma
All Publications
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Steinbeck in a Pandemic
STEINBECK REVIEW
2021; 18 (1): 1-13
View details for DOI 10.5325/steinbeckreview.18.1.0001
View details for Web of Science ID 000664162300002
- Failure and the American Writer: A Literary History Cambridge University Press. 2014
- Lost in the City Carleton Watkins: The Stanford Albums Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts. 2014
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Poor Poe: On the Literature of Revulsion
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
2011; 23 (1): 1-18
View details for DOI 10.1093/alh/ajq067
View details for Web of Science ID 000287168900001
- Excluded Middles: Social Inequality in American Literature The Blackwell Companion to American Literary Studies edited by Levine, R. S., Levander, C. Oxford: Blackwell. 2011
- The Embarrassment of Naturalism: Feeling Structure in Frank Norris’s McTeague Amerikastudien/American Studies 2010; 55 (1): 45-61
- Introduction Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom University of Massachusetts Press. 2009
- American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945 Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008
- American Dialects The Blackwell Companion to the History of the English Language edited by Momma, H., Matto, M. Oxford: Blackwell. 2008
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Before cultures: The ethnographic imagination in American literature, 1865-1920 (Book Review)
MODERN PHILOLOGY
2007; 105 (2): 402-405
View details for Web of Science ID 000253990700021
- Dialect American History through Literature, 1820-1870 edited by Gabler-Hover, J., Sattlemeyer, R. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 2006: 336–340
- Twain, Language, and the Southern Humorists A Companion to Mark Twain edited by Budd, L. J., Messent, P. Oxford: Blackwell. 2005: 125–140
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Poverty and the limits of literary criticism
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
2003; 15 (4): 765-792
View details for Web of Science ID 000186977900009
- Poverty, Gender, and Literary Criticism: Reassessing Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Comparative American Studies 2003; 1 (2): 153-177
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New World Babel: Languages and nations in Early America (Book Review)
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
2001; 13 (4): 776-788
View details for Web of Science ID 000172979300007
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The multilingual anthology of American literature: A reader of original texts with English translations (Book Review)
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
2001; 13 (4): 776-788
View details for Web of Science ID 000172979300008
- Those Gossamer Threads of Thought’: The Supernatural Naturalism of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie Essays in Arts and Sciences 1999; 28: 69-90
- Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999
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The paradise of aesthetics: Sylvester Judd's 'Margaret' and antebellum American literature
NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY-A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE AND LETTERS
1998; 71 (3): 449-472
View details for Web of Science ID 000076118100006
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"The sea ain' got no back door": The problems of Black consciousness in Paule Marshall's 'Brown Girl, Brownstones'
AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW
1998; 32 (4): 597-606
View details for Web of Science ID 000077644600004
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Signifying songs: The double meaning of black dialect in the work of George Washington Cable
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
1997; 9 (2): 244-267
View details for Web of Science ID A1997WZ65600006
- 'Whose Line is It Anyway?’ W.E.B. DuBois and the Language of the Color-line. Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century edited by Fossett, J. J., Tucker, J. A. New York: NYU Press. 1997: 19–34
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DUSKY COMMENTS OF SILENCE, LANGUAGE, RACE, AND MELVILLE,HERMAN 'BENITO CERENO'
STUDIES IN SHORT FICTION
1995; 32 (1): 39-50
View details for Web of Science ID A1995RG61700005