Alissa G. Karl

Alissa G. Karl, Ph.D

Associate Professor
(585) 395-2342
akarl@brockport.edu
Office: Liberal Arts 237

Education

  • PhD, English Language and Literature, University of Washington, 2005
  • MA, English, University of Manchester (UK), 1999
  • BA, English, summa cum laude, George Washington University, 1998

Areas of Specialty

  • Modern and Contemporary British, Anglophone, Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures
  • Cultural Studies of Economics and Finance
  • The novel
  • Literature, the nation-state and globalization
  • Critical Theory and Cultural Studies

Courses Taught

Teaching

  • British, Anglophone and Transatlantic Literature Courses
  • Contemporary British Literature (MA seminar, SUNY Brockport)
  • Modern British Literature (MA seminar and undergraduate)
  • 20th and 21st Century British Literature (traditional and hybrid online/in-person)
  • The modern Novel
  • The Contemporary Novel
  • Survey of British Literature, 1800-present
  • Introduction to Modern and Postmodern Literature

Topic and Genre Courses

  • Historical Fictions (senior capstone seminar, SUNY Brockport)
  • James Bond, History and Politics (senior capstone seminar, SUNY Brockport)
  • Economy, Crisis and Literature (senior capstone seminar, SUNY Brockport)
  • Consuming Literature, Literary Consumption (senior capstone seminar, University of Washington)
  • Literature and/as Economics in the Twentieth Century (senior capstone seminar, University of Washington)
  • Women writers
  • Techniques of the Novel (traditional and hybrid online/in-person
  • Introduction to Literature and Culture: Consumerism

Theory, Criticism and Analysis Courses

  • Critical Approaches to Literature (SUNY Brockport)
  • Introduction to Literary Analysis (SUNY Brockport)

Composition Courses

  • Advanced Composition (SUNY Brockport)
  • College Composition (first-year, SUNY Brockport)
  • Introduction to Expository Writing (first-year, University of Washington)
  • Educational Opportunity Program Expository writing (University of Washington)

Research Interests

  • Twentieth-century British and transatlantic literature and culture
  • Transatlantic modernisms
  • Literature and economics
  • Consumer culture
  • Contemporary British fiction
  • Literature and the nation and nationalism
  • The novel in the 20th century

Academic Positions

  • Associate Professor of English, State University of New York College at Brockport, 2014-present
  • Assistant Professor of English, State University of New York College at Brockport, 2007-2014
  • Acting Instructor, Dept. of English, University of Washington, 2005-2007
  • Teaching Assistant and Research Fellow, Dept. of English, University of Washington, 2000-2004

Scholarship

Monograph

  • Modernism and the Marketplace: Literary Culture and Consumer Capitalism in Rhys Woolf, Stein and Nella Larsen. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “The Zero Hour of the Neoliberal Novel.” Forthcoming in Textual Practice as part of the “Neoliberalism and the Novel” special issue (2015) ed. Alissa Karl and Emily Johansen.
  • “The Novel in the Economy.” Forcoming in The English Novel 1900-2000: Text and Theory, ed. Christoph Reinfandt. DeGruyter Handbook Series in English and American Studies (2016).

  • “Things Break Apart: James Kelman, Ali Smith, and the Neoliberal Novel.” In Reading Capitalist Realism, ed. Leigh Claire La Berge and Alison Shonkweiler. Iowa city: University of Iowa Pres, 2014.

  • “‘Bank Talk’, Interpretation and Financial Markets.” “Fictions of Finance” special issue of The Journal of Culture Economy 6.1 (2013), ed. Peter Knight.

  • “A Little Fiction is Good for You: Currency Crisis, the Nation State, and Waugh’s African Texts” Modern Fiction Studies 58.2 (Summer 2012): 261-83.

  • “Rhys, Keynes, and the Modern(ist) Economic Nation.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 43.3 (Fall 2010): 424-42.

  • “Waiting for Crisis: Casino Royale, Financial Aesthetics and National Narrative Form.” in Criticism, Crisis and Contemporary Narrative: Textual Horizons in an Age of Global Risk. Ed. Paul Crosthwaite, New York: Routeledge, 2011.

  • “Modernism’s Risky Business: Gertrude Steiin, Sylvia Beach and American Consumer Capitalism.” American Literature 80 (March 2008): 83-109.

  • “Goldfinger’s Gold Standard: Negotiating the economic nation in mid-twentieth century Britain.” The International Journal of Cultural Studies 11 (June 2008): 177-192.

Editorial Projects

  • “Neoliberalism and the Novel.” A special journal issue forthcoming in Textual Practice, co- edited with Emily Johansen (2015).

Reviews

  • Review of Carey James Mickalites’ Modernism and Market Fantasy, forthcoming in Modern Fiction Studies(2013).

  • Review of Robert J. Balfour (Ed.), Culture, Capital and Representation. Review of English Studies 62 (2011): 672-73.

  • Review of Jenny McDonnell’s Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Marketplace. KatherineMansfield Studies 3 (2011): 127-29.

  • Review of Ronald Berman’s Modernity and Progress: Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Orwell, and Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt’s Narrative Settlements: Geographies of British Women’s Fiction Between the Wars. Studies in the Novel 39 (Winter 2007): 498-501.

Under Preparation

  • Novels, Machines and the 20th Century Economic Imaginary (book)
  • “The Extra-Capitalist Extreme” (article)
  • “Assessing the Neoliberal Student: Higher Ed Policy and Economic Subjectivity” (article)

Professional Affiliations

  • Modern Language Association
  • Society for Novel Studies
  • American Compartive Literature
  • Modernist Studies Association
  • British Society for Literature and Science
  • Society for Literature, Science and the Arts