Benjamin Morgan

Department of English Language and Literature
University of Chicago
415A Rosenwald Hall
Chicago, IL 60657
bjmorgan@uchicago.edu

Employment
Assistant Professor of English, University of Chicago. July 2010 -

Education
Ph.D., Rhetoric, 2010, University of California, Berkeley

Dissertation: “The Matter of Beauty: Scientific Materialism and the Self in Victorian Aesthetic Theory”
Committee: Anthony Cascardi (Rhetoric) and Barbara Spackman (Comparative Literature), co-chairs; Ramona Naddaff (Rhetoric); C. Daniel Blanton (English)

M.A., Rhetoric, 2004, University of California, Berkeley

A.B. magna cum laude in Literature, 2001, Harvard University

Awards and Honors
Fellow, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009-2010
Fellow, UC Berkeley Arts Research Center, 2009
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, 2008
George Ford Travel Grant (Conference travel), 2008
Graduate Division Travel Award (Conference travel), 2008
Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship (Tuition and stipend), 2008
Summer Dissertation Research Grant, 2007, 2008
Rhetoric Department Block Grant (Tuition and stipend), 2005, 2007
Graduate Assembly Travel Award (Conference travel), 2007
Wollenberg Grant (German language study and conference travel), 2004, 2006, 2007
Center for British Studies Pre-Dissertation Grant (Summer travel and research), 2005
Wang Fellowship (Tuition), 2003
Hoopes Prize (For undergraduate thesis), 2001
Harvard College Research Fellowship (Summer thesis research), 2000
John Harvard Scholarship (Academic recognition), 1999–2001

Publications
“Aesthetic Freedom: Walter Pater and the Politics of Autonomy.” ELH 77.3 (Fall 2010): 731-756.

“Undoing Legal Violence: Walter Benjamin’s and Giorgio Agamben’s Aesthetics of Pure Means.” The Journal of Law and Society 34.1 (March 2007): 46–64. Reprinted in Democracy’s Empire. Ed. Stewart Motha. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

Review of Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception. Law, Culture and the Humanities 1.2 (July 2005): 264–265.

Conference Papers

“Grant Allen and the Science of Aesthetic Pleasure.” Arts Research Center Symposium, UC Berkeley, May 6, 2009.

“Aesthetics/Hedonics: The Science of Pleasure at the fin de siècle.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference, Skidmore College, April 24–26, 2009.

“A Lot of Art is Boring: The Psychological Aesthetics of Grant Allen and Vernon Lee.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association Conference, Wellesley College, April 3–5, 2009.

“Regeneration: Evolutionary Aesthetics and the Biology of Form.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference, March 26–28, 2009.

“Lucretian Aestheticism: The Materialist Flux and Aesthetic Subjectivity.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, Yale University, November 14–16, 2008. Also to be given at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, Pomona College, November 7–8, 2008.

“The Pleasures of Sinking: Decadent Self-Loss as Sublime Immersion.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Toronto, April 11–13, 2008.

“Is Bad Aestheticism Good Politics? William Morris and the Debate over Individualism.” Rhetoric Department Faculty/Graduate Student Panel, UC Berkeley, December 6, 2007.

“Pater’s Ethical Materialism.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Victoria, October 10–13, 2007.

“The Aesthetics of ‘Pure Means’: Violence and the Law in Benjamin and Agamben.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference, Syracuse University, March 24–25, 2006.

“Spectatorship as Action: Arendt’s Lectures on Kant and the Futurist Spectacle.” “Rethinking Reception” graduate conference, Duke University, March 25–26, 2005.

Teaching Experience
Primary Instructor

Rhetoric R1B (Reading and Composition): “Science and Literature: The Two Cultures,” Summer 2009

  • Analyzed nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions of the two cultures debate, and discussed the role of “literariness” in scientific writing as well as the influence of science on literature. Texts included Thomas Huxley, Matthew Arnold, C.P. Snow, F.R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling, R.L. Stevenson, Frederick Myers, and Elaine Showalter.

Rhetoric R1B (Reading and Composition): “Irrationality, Madness, and Superstition in Victorian Prose” Summer 2008

  • Introduced Victorian Prose by focusing on tensions between scientific, theological, and humanistic paradigms of knowledge. Texts included John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Henry Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater.

Rhetoric R1B: “Aestheticism and Decadence,” Summer 2007

  • Introduced the literature, poetry, and art of the late nineteenth century, attending to the problems involved in textual and visual representations of pleasure. Texts included Thèophile Gautier, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, A.C. Swinburne, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Max Nordau.

Rhetoric R1B: “Introduction to Literary Theory,” Spring 2007

  • Surveyed twentieth-century approaches to literary theory. Texts included Victor Shklovsky, Northrop Frye, Wolfgang Iser, Roland Barthes, Paul de Man, Elaine Showalter, and Cornell West.

Rhetoric R1A: “The Transmission of Meaning,” Fall 2005

  • Focused on how formal and rhetorical strategies of texts influence, change, or contradict their substantive meaning. Texts included Herman Melville, John Berger, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, episodes of reality television, and print advertising.

Rhetoric R1A: “The Aesthetics of Evil,” Summer 2005

  • Introduced students to philosophical and literary approaches to the relation between ethics and aesthetics. Texts included Plato, Aristotle, Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess, Henry James, and Elaine Scarry.

Teaching Assistant
Rhetoric 20:  “Theories of the Lie: Plato to Derrida,” Spring 2005, 2008 and 2009
Rhetoric 20: “Twentieth-Century Theories of Interpretation,” Fall 2006
Rhetoric R1B: “The Politics of Performance,” Summer 2006
Rhetoric 20: “Early Modern Europe and its Others,” Fall 2004
Rhetoric R1A: “The Scientist and the Detective,” Spring 2004
Rhetoric R1A: “Violence and Persuasion,” Fall 2003

Professional Affiliations

Modern Language Association
Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
North American Victorian Studies Association
Nineteenth Century Studies Association
Northeast Victorian Studies Association
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Association