Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois

Eleanor Courtemanche

Associate Professor of English

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Contact Information

Education

PhD (Comparative Literature): Cornell 1998. BA: Yale 1990.

Teaching Interests

Victorian literature and culture; histories of economics, technology, and design; narrative theory; popular culture; urbanism and steampunk.

Courses

Grad Courses: "The Industrial Novel and the Rise of Cultural Studies (2006), "Sexuality and Empire in the Fin de Siècle" (2009), "Victorian Socialisms" (2011). Selected Undergrad Courses: "Dickens and the Victorian City," "Pulp Fictions of the 1890s," "Tales of Economic Disaster."

Research Interests

Economic and political approaches to Victorian fiction; history of economic theory in Europe and America; socialism and anarchism; history of urban planning; narrative theory; irony and comedy.

Selected Publications

Books

  • The 'Invisible Hand' and British Fiction, 1818-1860: Adam Smith, Political Economy, and the Genre of Realism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Book Contributions

  • "Invisible Hands and Visionary Narrators: Why the Free Market is Like a Novel." Metaphors of Economy. Ed. Nicole Bracker and Stefan Herbrechter. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 69-78.
  • "Unintended Consequences and the Epistemology of Fraud from Dickens to Hayek." Debt [forthcoming]. Ed. Peter Paik. 2012.

Journal Articles

  • "'Naked Truth is the Best Eloquence': Martineau, Dickens, and the Moral Science of Realism." ELH 73.2 (2006): 383-407.
  • "Bread, Roses, and Reason: Or, Can Victorian Cultural Criticism Reform Political Economy?." Nineteenth Century Studies 16 (2002): 115-25.
  • "Kafka and the Mirror of Instrumental Reason." Journal of the Kafka Society of America 19.1-2 (1995): 16-24.
  • "Marx, Heine, and German Cosmopolitanism: The 1844 'Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher'." Telos 159 (2012): 49-63.

Reviews

  • Rev. of Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society. Nineteenth Century Contexts 31.1 (2009): 81-83.
  • Rev. of Victorian Writing About Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World. Nineteenth Century Literature 56.2 (2001): 265-268.
  • Rev. of Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: On the Relation of Part to Whole, 1859-1920.RaVoN (forthcoming) (2012):

Works in Progress

  • Book Project: "Fragile Capitalism." Article on Fabian socialism.