Matthew Hart
Assistant Professor of English and Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Contact Information
- Address: 341 English
- Telephone: 217-333-4774
- Email: matthart@illinois.edu
Office Hours
- W 9-11
Education
PhD University of Pennsylvania, 2004; MA University of Sussex, 1997; MA (Hons) University of Edinburgh, 1996.
Courses
I teach classes in British literature, modernist poetry, critical theory, the novel, and contemporary writing. I also have a side interest in contemporary art. My graduate seminars have focused on topics like fictions of transnationalism, the idea of the vernacular, and culture and the state. I'm offering a new class in Fall 2009, "English 300: Contemporary Black British Writing," and co-teaching an interdisciplinary arts seminar with Lisa Dixon from the Theatre Department. Sadly, this will be my last year at Illinois. From July 2010, I will take up a new position at Columbia University.
Research Interests
20th- and 21st-century Anglophone Literature, Contemporary Fiction, Poetry and Poetics, Modernism and its Legacies, Contemporary Art, Political Theory
Publications
Books
- Nations of Nothing But Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Contemporary Literature and the State. A Special Issue of Contemporary Literature 49/4. Ed. Matthew Hart and Jim Hansen. 2008.
Book Contributions
- "Regionalism in English Fiction." Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel. Ed. Robert Caserio. Cambridge U. P. , 2009.
- "All The Downtown Tories: Mourning Englishness in New York." Empire and After: Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective. Ed. G. MacPhee and P. Poddar. Berghahn Books, 2007. 183-201.
- "Tradition and the Postcolonial Talent: T. S. Eliot vs. E. K. Brathwaite." The International Reception of T. S. Eliot. Ed. S. Bagchee and E. Daumer. Continuum, 2007. 5-24.
- "The Cartographic Uncanny." Layla Curtis. Locus + Arts, 2006. 43-47.
Journal Articles
- "The Headless Prime Minister and Other Tales: A Response to Anthony Hutchinson." American Literary History 21.4 (2009): 11 Nov. 2009.
- "The Politics of the State in Contemporary Literary Studies." Literature Compass 6 (2009): 1-11.
- Hart, Matthew, and Jim Hansen. "Introduction: Contemporary Literature and the State." Contemporary Literature 49.4 (2008): 491-514.
- "The Third English Civil War: David Peace's Occult History of Thatcherism." Contemporary Literature 49.4 (2008): 572-595.
- "Nationalist Internationalism: a Diptych in Modernism and Revolution." JML 31.1 (2007): 21-46.
- "An Interview with David Peace." Contemporary Literature 47.4 (2006): 546-68.
- "The Measure of All That Has Been Lost: Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, and the Price of Political Relevance." Postmodern Culture 13.3 (2003): n.p..
- "Solvent Abuse: Irvine Welsh and Scotland." Postmodern Culture 12.2 (2002): n.p..
Reviews
- "On Transnational Modernisms." Rev. of Anita Patterson, Race, American Literature, and Transnational Modernisms and Laura Winkiel, Modernism, Race, and ManifestoesSafundi: the Journal of South African and American Studies 11.1-2 (2010):
- "Contemporary Fiction and the Critical Act." Rev. of Richard Bradford, The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction (Blackwell, 2007) and Brian W. Shaffer, ed., A Companion to the British and Irish Novel, 1945–2000 (Blackwell, 2005) Contemporary Literature 50.1 (2009): 192-201.
- Rev. of Laura O'Connor, Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, the British Empire, and De-Anglicization.Modernism/Modernity 15.4 (2008): 830-31.
- "Visible Poet: T. S. Eliot and Modernist Studies.." Rev. of David E. Chinitz, T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (Chicago, 2003) and Charles W. Pollard, New World Modernisms (Virginia, 2004)American Literary History 19.1 (2007): 174-89.
Works in Progress
- "Late Britain," a book manuscript on the politics of transnational culture in the millennial UK.
- Essays on extraterritoriality in W. G. Sebald, hauntological politics in Tom McCarthy and Nicola Barker, and the photography of Melanie Friend
