Len Gutkin
Phone: (443) 465-4880 * Email: lengutkin@gmail.com
CURRENT POSITION
Senior Editor, The Chronicle Review
Member, Harvard Society of Fellows (Junior Fellow 2015-2018)
EDUCATION
Ph.D. English. Yale University (2014)
B.A., English. Bard College (2007)
BOOKS
Dandyism: Forming Fiction from Modernism to the Present (2020, University of Virginia).
Unseriousness Seriously Pursued: Irony and Camp Affect from Henry James to Lars von Trier (in progress).
ARTICLES
“‘Vast Impropriety’: Tragedy, Camp Negation, and the double entendre in Henry James,” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 51.2 (Summer 2018): 105-131.
“Muriel Spark’s Camp Metafiction,” Contemporary Literature 58.1 (Spring 2017): 53-81.
“Modernist Genre Decadence from H.G. Wells to William S. Burroughs,” Affirmations: of the modern 5.1 (Autumn 2017): 29-54.
“The Dandified Dick: Hardboiled Noir and the Wildean Epigram,” ELH 81.4 (December 2014): 1299-1326.
“Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood and Decadent Style,” Literature Compass 11.6 (June 2014): 337-346.
“The Feral Sublime: Caspar Hauser and Melville’s Pierre,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 15.2 (June 2013): 20-36.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“The Aestheticist Anti-Novel,” in British Avant-Garde Fiction of the 1960s (Edinburgh University Press, January 2019): 72-89.
“‘If not by reality’s yardstick’: Narrative Unreliability, Retrospection, and Myth in Mary Caponegro,” in La squisita interruzione: saggi, note e appunti sulla prosa lirica di Mary Caponegro (I Quaderni di Zeta, Udine, 2017): 81-90.
OCCASIONAL ESSAYS AND REVIEWS
“Exodus: Vaera,” Jewish Currents (April 30, 2020)
Review of Philip Mann, The Dandy at Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century. Modernism/modernity 26.3 (Autumn 2019): 678-680.
“A Tale of Two Plagiarists,” The Chronicle Review (October 11, 2019).
“Philip Roth and the Fantasies of Authorship.” Post45 (April 2019, online).
Review essay on Matthew Wilkens, Revolution: The Event in Postwar Fiction. Amerikastudien/American Studies 63.1 (Summer 2018).
Review of Bénédicte Cost, Catherine Delyfer, and Christine Reynier (eds.), Connecting Aestheticism and Modernism: Continuities, Revisions, Speculations. Modernism/modernity 24.4 (Winter 2017): 882-884.
Review of Thomas S. Davis, The Extinct Scene: Late Modernism and Everyday Life. Modern Fiction Studies 63.4 (Winter 2017): 763-765.
“The University Is Not A Technology” (with Sam Fallon). The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 17, 2017).
“Allegory and Disturbance: On Twin Peaks: The Return.” Post45 (September 2017, online).
“Genre Mistuned: On Twin Peaks: The Return.” Post45 (August 2017, online).
Review of Claire Jarvis, Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form. Los Angeles Review of Books (March 2017, online).
Review of Andrew Pepper, Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State. Times Literary Supplement (February 10, 2017).
Review essay on Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique and Lee Konstantinou, Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction. Amerikastudien/American Studies 61.4 (Winter 2016).
“The Elenic Question: On Ferrante and Authorship” (with Merve Emre). The Los Angeles Review of Books (October 2016, online).
“Matthew Barney’s ‘Excrementitious’ Transcendentalism: On River of Fundament.” The Los Angeles Review of Books (April 2016, online).
Review of Henry Mead, T.E. Hulme and the Politics of Early Modernism.Times Literary Supplement (January 22, 2016).
“Radical Feeling in the Poetry of WWI”: Max Egremont, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew. Boston Review (August 2014, online).
“Camp von Trier”: Lars von Trier, Nymphomaniac. The Los Angeles Review of Books (March 2014, online).
“Minority Rapport”: Review of Michael Szalay, Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party. Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 27 (January 2013): 108-115.
“The Last Obscenity”: On William Gaddis, Selected Letters. The Los Angeles Review of Books (June 2013, online).
Review of John Paul Athanasourelis, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. The Journal of Popular Culture 45.6 (December 2012): 1332-1334.
Review of Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet. Jacket2 (October 2012, online).
Review of Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man. Bookforum (July 2012, online).
Review of William Gaddis, JR. Bookforum(April 2012, online).
“Madame Futurist”: On Mina Loy, Selected Prose. The Brooklyn Rail (September 2011).
Review of Lyn Hejinian and Carla Harryman, The Wide Road (Belladonna, 2011). MAKE (online).
Review essay on Djuna Barnes, Ryder (Dalkey, 2010). MAKE10 (Fall/Winter 2010-11).
PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED TALKS (SELECTED)
“Camp’s Abstractions: Dandyism, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Modernism’s End”: Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, April 2021.
“Unseriousness Seriously Pursued: On Camp Tonalities”: Genre Talks featured Spring lecture, University of Oklahoma, April 2019.
“Djuna Barnes’s Decadent Science-Fictional Resonance”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Georgetown University, March 2019.
“The Psychopathic Dandy: From Oscar Wilde to Bret Easton Ellis”: North American Victorian Studies Annual Convention, Phoenix, November 2016.
“Lars von Trier and Aesthetic Judgment”: Harvard Society of Fellows Annual Conference, Salon de Provence, June 2016.
“Lars von Trier’s Camp Sadism”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Seattle, March 2015.
“American Psycho and Hyper-realism”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, New York University, March 2014.
“Homophobic Violence and the Artist Plot in Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Brown University, March 2012.
“Wildean Wisecracking: Making the Epigram (More) Macho”: Yale British Studies Colloquium, November 2011.
“Reserved Heroics: From Victorian Reserve to the Hemingway Code”: Modernist Studies Association Annual Convention, SUNY Buffalo, October 2011.
“Hemingway and Aesthetic Connoisseurship”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Simon Fraser University, April 2011.
“The Fiction Collective: From Historical Avant-Garde to University Press,” Yale 20/21st Colloquium, November 2010.
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Harvard Society of Fellows (2015-2018).
Leylan Prize Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University, 2012-2013
Heinrich Bluecher Prize, Bard College, 2007.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND MEMBERSHIPS
Article manuscript referee for Edinburgh University Press; Modernism/modernity; Contemporary Women’s Writing.
Panel Organizer, “Aestheticism’s Afterlives”: Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Chicago, January 2019.
Seminar Co-Organizer, “The New Reception Studies”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Universiteit Utrecht, July 2017.
Seminar Co-Organizer, “Genre As Aesthetic Judgment”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Harvard University, March 2016.
Chair, “The Modern(ist) Historical Novel”: Modernist Studies Association Annual Convention, Boston, November 2015.
Seminar Co-Organizer, “Eighties Excess”: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, New York University, March 2014.
Respondent, Professor John Brenkman, “James the Minimalist,” 2010.
Respondent, Professor Mark McGurl, “Zombie Renaissance,” 2009.
Member, Modernist Studies Association.
Member, American Comparative Literature Association.
Member, Modern Language Association.
TEACHING
Instructor, English 112, “Critical Reading and Writing II.” Endicott College, Spring 2017.
Instructor, English 111, “Critical Reading and Writing I.” Endicott College, Fall 2016.
Instructor, English 313, “World Literature.” Endicott College, Fall 2016
Language & Thinking Program, Bard College, Summer 2014.
Instructor, English 127, “Readings in American Literature.” Yale University, Spring 2014.
Instructor, English 114, “Outsiders.” Yale University, Fall 2013.
Language & Thinking Program, Bard College, Summer 2012.
Instructor, English 130, “Epic.” Yale University, Spring 2012.
Teaching Assistant, “Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Histories” (Professor David Kastan). Yale University, Fall 2011.
Teaching Assistant, “Victorian Novel” (Professor Ruth Yeazell). Yale University, Spring 2011.
Teaching Assistant, “Hemingway Faulkner Fitzgerald” (Professor Wai Chee Dimock). Yale University, Fall 2010.
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