PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Associate Professor of American Literature, University of North Georgia
Department of English (2017- Present)
Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow
Georgia Institute of Technology (2016-2017)
Visiting Fellow in American Studies
Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, Germany (2013-2014)
EDUCATION
Ph.D. English, emphasis in Critical Theory. University of California, Davis. 2016.
B.A. English & Political Science. Wake Forest University. 2008
PUBLICATIONS
Book Projects
Making Liberalism New: American Intellectuals, Modern Literature, and the Rewriting of a Political Tradition. Johns Hopkins UP, 2021.
“Belonging and Betrayal: ‘Selling Out’ in Modern American Culture.” (Manuscript in progress)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Carl Schmitt in Outer Space: on Cixin Liu’s ‘Dark Forest’.” NOVEL (Forthcoming)
“On the Literary History of Selling Out: Craft, Identity and Commercial Recognition.” PMLA 137.2 (March 2022): 230-45.
“From Obama’s Presidency to Beatty’s Booker Prize: On the Notion of the ‘Racial Sellout.’” African American Review 54.3 (2021): 219-32.
“Between Periodical Studies and Intellectual History: KAPITALISTATE (1973-83) at the Dawn of Neoliberalism.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 64.3 (2019): 291-410.
“Sinclair Lewis and the Liberals Who Never Learn: Reading Politics in It Can’t Happen Here.” Studies in the Novel 51.4 (Winter 2019): 523-545.
“Surveying American Late Modernism: Partisan Review and the Cultural Politics of the Questionnaire.” Modernism/modernity Print+ 4.1 (2019): https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0102
“Cocktails or Communism? Vanity Fair‘s Belated Women of the 1930s.” American Periodicals (Fall 2019).
“Liberal Use of Possession: Intellectuals, Abortion, and Tess Slesinger’s Modernism.” ELH (Fall 2018): 803-824.
“Style, Ideology, and Autonomy: Making Room for Late Modernism in the American Scene.” Literature Compass 14.10 (2017): 10.1111/lic3.12408.
“Liberalism’s Blind Judgment: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Politics of Reception.” Modern Fiction Studies 61.1 (Spring 2015): 90-113.
Invited Articles for a Journal Special Issue
“The American Fear of Literature: Sinclair Lewis, Satire, and the Noble Prize.” Letteratura d’America, special issue on American Nobel Prize winners. (Forthcoming)
Chapters in an Edited Volume
“On or about 1989: Liberal Pluralism at the End of History.” The Routledge Companion to Politics and Literature. Routledge Publishing (Forthcoming 2022)
“Zeitschriften und Populärkultur Science Fiction Pulps” (Periodicals and Popular Culture: Science Fiction Pulps.) Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung (The State of Magazine Studies) Transcript Publishing: Bielefeld, Germany. 303-15.
“Partisan Review.” The Routledge Companion to the Literary Magazine. London: Routledge (2022): 364-74.
“Contemporary Reception.” Richard Wright in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (2021): 318-28.
Book Reviews
Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century, by Joshua L. Cherniss. H-Diplo Roundtable Review (Forthcoming)
Templates for Authorship: American Women’s Literary Autobiography of the 1930s, by Windy Counsell Petrie. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (Forthcoming)
Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, by Elizabeth Outka. South Atlantic Review 86.2 (Summer 2021): 38-41
Transatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile, and Culture in Midcentury America, by Will Norman. Canadian Journal of Comparative Literature 45.2 (2018): 340-343
The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Lindsey Banco. American Literary History Online Series XIII (2017)
Bleak Liberalism by Amanda Anderson. Studies in the Novel 49.4 (Winter 2017): 559-561.
The Democratic Surround: Multimedia & American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties, by Fred Turner. Amerikastudien / American Studies 60.1 (Winter 2015)
Pedagogy Essays, Reference Work and Other Publications
“English Composition (ENGL1101) Course Redesign at the University of North Georgia.” Gateways to Completion: Case Study Anthology. Brevard NC: Gardner Institute, 2021. 23-27
Academic Advisor for Gale Cengage Short Story Criticism volume on Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Lived Underground.” (2017)
“Teaching Modernism through the Little Magazines.” TECHStyle (Nov 2016)
“On the Use and Abuse of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed for Reading Tess Slesinger’s The Unpossessed.” Notes and Queries 259.1 (March 2014): 135-36.
“California Paranoia in Germany: Teaching the Political Aesthetic of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.” Teaching American Literature in Theory and Practice 7.3/4 (Fall/Winter 2014): 36-48.
“1919,” “The 42nd Parallel,” and “The Big Money” by John Dos Passos. Three linked entries for The Literary Encyclopedia (2011-2012)
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Associate Professor, University of North Georgia (2017- )
Introduction to Literary Studies
The Short Story: Principles of Modern Fiction
American Modernism Seminar in 20thC American Literature (Race in Literature, Law, and Film) Seminar in Genre Studies (Science Fiction)
Seminar in Literary Criticism (Marx Nietzsche Freud)
American Literature II (Survey 1865- )
African-American Literature (Survey)
Multicultural American Literature (Survey)
ENGL 1101/1102 (Composition I and II)
Instructor, Georgia Institute of Technology (2016-2017)
From Print Culture to Digital Archive: American Literature and its Periodicals
Visiting Instructor, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, Germany (2013-2014)
Introduction to Critical Theory (MA Seminar)
“African-American Modernisms” (MA Seminar)
Twentieth Century American Literature and Culture
Written Composition: “Introducing the Mechanics of Literary Criticism”
Teaching Assistant, University of California, Davis (2009-2010)
Modern Literary and Critical Theory
The Cultural History of the Blues
Introduction to Literary Theory
The American Novel, 1900-
The Literature of Secrecy and Terror
CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
Selected Conference Papers
(2021) “On the Literary History of Selling Out,” SAMLA, Nov. 4-7
(2020) “On the Literary History of Selling Out,” Modernist Studies Association, Oct. 22-25 (Canceled due to COVID)
(2020) “Henry James and the Literary Sellout.” SAMLA, Nov. 13-15 (2019) “Arthur Miller and the Ends of Tragedy.” SAMLA, Nov. 16-18
(2019) “Modernity, Liberalism, and the End of Tragedy.” Modernist Studies Association, Oct. 16-20
(2018) “The Audacity of Satire: Obama, Beatty, and the Racial Sellout.” Symposium on the Post-Obama Ethos, organized by the Obama Institute and Georgia St, Mar 23-24
(2018) “Sinclair Lewis and the Liberals Who Never Learn.” Modern Language Association, Jan 4-7.
(2017) “High Modernism and Low Blows: Tess Slesinger’s Party Politics.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Nov. 3-5.
(2017) “Surveying American Late Modernism: Partisan Review and the Modernist Questionnaire.” Modernist Studies Association, August 10-13.
(2017) “A Liberal Modernism? Crisis and Political Critique in the American 1930s.” American Comparative Literature Association, July 6-9.
(2017) “‘The Situation in American Writing’: Partisan Review and the Cultural Politics of the Modernist Questionnaire.” American Literature Association, May 25-28.
(2017) “Liberal Use of Possession: Intellectuals, Abortion, and Tess Slesinger’s 1930s.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Mar. 23-26
(2016) “Cocktails and Communism: Tess Slesinger and the Ironies of the Modernist Party.” American Literature Association, May 26-29
(2015) “From Democratic Party to Liberal Totalitarianism: Norman Mailer’s Presidential Papers.” Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association, Nov. 6-8
(2015) “Nabokov, JFK, and the Politics of Style,” Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Institute, June 22-28
(2014) “Making Room for Late Modernism: Autonomy and Its Discontents,” Modernist Studies Association 16, Nov 6-9
(2014) “Tragic Liberalism in Midcentury America,” British Association for American Studies, April 10-13
(2013) “A ‘Functional Failure’: Documenting Tragic Politics in James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” Modernist Studies Association 15, Aug 29-Sep 3
Other Conference Participation
(2020) “Modernism and the Market” Panel Organizer and Chair. Modernist Studies Association, Oct. 22-25 (Canceled due to COVID) (2019) “Translation and Transnational Periodical Cultures” Workshop. Zentrum für Interkulturelle Studien, JGU, Germersheim, Germany.
(2018) “Liberalism and Modernism.” Modernist Studies Association Seminar Co-Organizer, Nov 7-9
(2017) “Cultures High and Low in 20th Century US Literature.” Chair SAMLA 89, Atlanta Nov 3-5
(2017) Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, BC, Canada June 12-16
(2015) “Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Institute, June 22-28
(2014) “The Concept of Late Modernism,” Panel Organizer/Chair, MSA 16, Nov 6-9
(2014) American Studies Graduate Student Symposium. Organizer, JGU, Mainz, Germany, Mar 22
Invited Talks, Interviews, and Podcasts
(2019) “Strong or Weak Theory? Reading Modern Magazines.” Invited Talk at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Mainz, Germany
(2018-19) “Race Relations in American Culture.” Lecture Series at Forsyth Public Library, Georgia; topics include Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, N.K. Jemisin, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Alice Walker.
(2017-19) “Whiteness and American Literature,” “Fascism and its Symbols: from Germany to the United States.” “Race Relations at UNG.” Invited Talks with Black Student Union, UNG
(2016-7) “What’s in a Word?” Interview Series with WREK 91.1 Atlanta. “Pynchonesque” Dec. 14; “Public Humanities” Apr. 10; “Postmodernism” Nov. 11; “Liberalism” Oct. 10. (2017)
(2017) “Partisan Review and American Radicalism.” Invited Talk at the Obama Institute, July 11
SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS
(2020) Shott Award for Research Support, University of North Georgia (2019) Fellowship, The Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Mainz, Germany
(2019) Presidential Incentive Research Award ($10,000), University of North Georgia
(2018) Shott Award for Research Support, University of North Georgia
(2018) Shott Award for Teaching Support, University of North Georgia
(2017) Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) Grant, Georgia Institute of Technology
(2017) Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center Grant, Georgia Institute of Technology
(2015-16) Provosts’ Dissertation Year Fellowship. University of California, Davis
(2015) Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. University of California, Davis
(2015) Summer Dissertation Fellowship. University of California, Davis
(2013-2014) Mainz Exchange Fellowship. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
(2020- ) English Ad Hoc Diversity Committee: Pedagogy and Curriculum
(2018- ) Hoag Campus Lecture Series Committee, UNG
(2018- ) Literature Curriculum Committee (Current Co-Chair)
(2018- ) UNG Press Faculty Board
(2018-20) Gateway to Completion Committee, USG/UNG
(2017- ) B.A. Thesis (3) and M.A.T. Exam Committees (3), UNG
(2020) Hiring Committee, Assistant Professor of Education, UNG
(2020) Reader, The Comparatist
(2019) Reader, Atlantic Studies
(2019) Reader, South Atlantic Review
(2018) Georgia Conference on Undergraduate Research Advisor, UNG
(2017-18) Hiring Committee, Assistant Professor of English, UNG
(2016-17) Programmatic Assessment Committee, Georgia Institute of Technology
(2016-17) Reader, Contemporary Literature
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
Modern Language Association
Modernist Studies Association
South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Ian Afflerbach 