Professor Stuart Burrows, “'A Certain Form of Words’: Henry James’s Moral Landscape,” with Professor Theo Davis, Respondent

NOVEL THEORY

SPEAKER: Stuart Burrows, Brown University

RESPONDENT: Theo Davis, Northeastern University

This paper, "'A Certain Form of Words': Henry James's Moral Landscape," is the introduction to his forthcoming book, The Morality of Form: Reading Henry James. 

Stuart Burrows is Associate Professor of English at Brown University, where he teaches classes on nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction and poetry, film, and literary theory. His first book, A Familiar Strangeness: American Fiction and the Language of Photography (Georgia, 2008), argued that the invention of the camera transformed the way American writers conceived of the limits and the purpose of representation. His essays on writers ranging from Jane Austen to W. G. Sebald have appeared in a range of edited collections and journals such as American Literary History, boundary 2, J19, and NOVEL. This paper is the introduction to his forthcoming book, The Morality of Form: Reading Henry James. 

Theo Davis is Professor of English at Northeastern University. Her last book, Ornamental Aesthetics (Oxford 2016) pursued a theory of ornamentation as attending in 19th century American literature, and her current book project on Attachment Issues extends her interest in attention through an investigation of how attachment theory can illuminate qualities of connection and co-presence in literature. Her work has appeared in journals including ALH, ELH, and Theory and Event and has been supported by the Guggenheim foundation.

How To Join

Please add your name and email address to this registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and passcode to the event.

Please find a copy of Stuart Burrows’s paper below. The passcode for the event will also open the file.

If you have any questions, please contact Deidre Lynch at deidrelynch@fas.harvard.edu or Yoon Sun Lee at ylee@wellesley.edu.