Jonathan Eburne

DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

The Pennsylvania State University

311 Burrowes Building

University Park, PA 16802 USA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

The Pennsylvania State University

112 Burrowes Building

University Park, PA 16802 USA

E-mail: jpe11@psu.edu

Phone: 814.863.0589

Fax: 814.863.8882

ACADEMIC POSITIONS HELD

Fall 2005        Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English, The Pennsylvania State University

2004-2005     Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University

2003-2004    Lecturer, Department of English, The Pennsylvania State University

2002-2003    Lecturer, Department of English , University of Tennessee

EDUCATION

1995-2002    University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory

1989-1993    Dartmouth College, A.B. in High Honors English and French, Magna Cum Laude                               

CURRENT PROJECTS

Surrealism and the Art of Crime (Book project; manuscript under revision).

Surrealism and the Art of Crime examines the role of crime in the conceptual universe of the surrealist movement.  It contends that the internationally-born writers and artists of the surrealist movement were fierce critics of the patterns of violence and conformity at work in modern life.  As interpreters of modern culture, the surrealists recognized that the crime discourse of the 19th and 20th centuries offered indispensible insights into the social and ideological forces that shaped twentieth-century experience.

Special Issue Co-Editor, with Jeremy Braddock, “Paris, Modern Fiction, and the Black Atlantic” Modern Fiction Studies 51:4 (Winter 2005); in preparation.  Read the  Call for Papers.

The Killers: Three Urban Crime Novels from the Antebellum United States (edited collection with scholarly introduction, manuscript in progress).  This edition reprints three urban crime thrillers from the mid- 19th Century: George Lippard's  The Killers, a Narrative of Real Life in Philadelphia (1850); George Thompson's The House Breaker, or, the Mysteries of Crime (1848); and Ned Buntline's The Death-Mystery, a Crimson Tale of Life in New York (1861).

PUBLICATIONS

Journal Articles

• “The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série Noire,” (PMLA, May 2005).

• “Anti-Humanism and Terror: Surrealism, Theory, and the Postwar Left,” (Yale French Studies, forthcoming).

• “Violette Nozières et la réécriture alchimique du viol,” Pleine Marge 40 (December 2004).

• “Chandler’s Waste Land,” Studies in the Novel 35: 3 (Fall 2003). Special issue on Raymond Chandler.

• “That Obscure Object of Revolt: Heraclitus, Surrealism’s Lightning-Conductor,” Symploke 8: 1-2 (Spring 2000), 180-204. [appeared 2001].

• “Trafficking in the Void: The Consumption of Otherness in the Beat Generation.”  Modern Fiction Studies 43:1 (Spring 1997), 53-92.

Book Chapters and Other Contributions

• Assistant Editor, with Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Themes and Movements (London: Phaidon, 2004).

• “‘The Exact Representation of the World’: Leonora Carrington’s Labyrinth of Fear” (forthcoming in edition of conference procedings, Surrealism Laid Bare).

• “Locked Room, Bloody Chamber,” Surrealism: Crossings/Frontiers, ed. Elza Adamowitz (Berlin: Peter Lang, forthcoming).

• “On Murder, Considered As One of the Surrealist Arts: Robert Desnos in the Shadow of Jack the Ripper,” Surrealism in the New Century: Celebrating Robert Desnos, eds. Marie-Claire Barnet, Eric Robertson, and Nigel Smith (Dublin: Philomel Press, 2004).

• Entries on Chester Himes, Marcel Duhamel, Philippe Soupault, and Benjamin Péret in Enclyclopedia of the French Atlantic, ed. Bill Marshall (Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2005).

• “Surrealism Noir,” Surrealism, Politics, and Culture, eds. Raymond Spiteri and Donald LaCoss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2003).

• “The Cheerless Art of Industry: Marcel Duchamp and the Smithee Readymade,” Directed By Allen Smithee, eds. Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock, (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001), 229-247.

Review Essays

“Object Lessons: Surrealist Art, Surrealist Politics,” Review Essay: Steven Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche; Johanna Malt, Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics; David Bate, Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Social Dissent; and Jean Clair, Du surréalisme considéré dans ses rapports au totalitarianisme et aux tables tournantes. Contribution à une histoire de l'insensé. in Modernism/modernity12.1 (2005) 175-181.-

“The Edges of Surrealism,” Review essay: Katharine Conley, Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life; Claudine Frank, ed., The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader; and Eric Zafran, Surrealism and Modernism.  Journal of Modern Literature 26: 3/4, Spring 2004.

Review essay, Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit; and David Joselit, Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941. Other Voices, v.1, n.2 (September 1998). http://www.othervoices.org/1.2

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University, 2004-5.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Rice University, 2004-6 (declined).

William Penn Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1995 (1996-97 declined) and 2001.

University Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2000.

Bourse Chateaubriand for dissertation research in France, 1999.

French Institute for Culture and Technology Travel Fellowship, 1999 & 2001.

Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship for Graduate Study, 1996, 1997, 1998.

Dartmouth College General Research Fellowship, 1994.

Arthur Feinstein Thesis Prize for excellence in the English Honors Program, 1993.

George E. Diller Memorial Prize in French, 1993

SESSIONS ORGANIZED AND PANELS CHAIRED

Seminar co-organizer, with Janine Mileaf, 2005 MSA: “The Avant-Garde and its Object.”

Seminar organizer and chair, 2005 ACLA: “The Use-Value of the Avant-Garde.”

Special session organizer, 2004 MLA: “Paranoia, Theory, Paranoia.”

Panel co-organizer, with Laurie Monahan, 2004 MSA: “Violence and the Event.”

Chair and organizer, special session, 2003 MLA: “Surrealism and the Sadean Woman.”

Chair and panel organizer, 2003 American Studies Association: “Strikers, Communists, and Detectives.”

Panel co-organizer, with Jeremy Braddock, 2002 MSA: “Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic”

Panel organizer, double session, 2000 MSA: “The Surrealist Intervention I and II.”

Participated in  7-day colloquium, “Robert Desnos pour l’an 2000,” Cérisy-la-Salle, France, July 2000.

Co-organized two interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Pennsylvania:  “Specters of Legitimacy: A Retrospective and Conference on the Films of Allen Smithee” (Fall 1998), and “Body Parts/ Partial Bodies, An Interdisciplinary Conference” (Spring 1997).

LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“Misère de la pornographie: du surréalisme à l’écriture féminine”

Invited Lecture, “Plaisir, souffrance et sublimation du corps,” Bordeaux, France, December 2005.

“Anti-Humanism and Terror: Surrealism, Theory, and the Postwar Left”

Invited Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 2005.

“Is Philadelphia Paris?: Film Noir, Brotherly Love, and the Critique of Urban Geography.” 

“Cold War France and America: New Perspectives,” Florida State University, February 2005.

“The Hard-Boiled Ethics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman”

Invited Lecture, Florida State University; Concordia University; University of California, Davis, January 2005.

“Goodis, Truffault, and the Psychogeography of Brotherly Love”

Special Session: “Writing Philadelphia” MLA, Philadelphia, December 2004.

“Persecution Mania: Surrealism, Marxism, Fascism”

Special Session: “Paranoia, Theory, Paranoia,” MLA, Philadelphia, December 2004.

“The Death of Nick Carter: Race and the American Dime Novel in Jazz-Age Paris”

ASA Annual Conference, Atlanta GA, November 2004.

“True Crime, Imaginary Terror”

“Imaginary Violence,” MSA 6, Vancouver, BC, October 2004.

“Hard-Boiled Ethics”

“Narrative Ethics,” Modern Language Association, December 2003.

“‘The Exact Representation of the World’: Leonora Carrington’s Labyrinth of Fear.”

“Surrealism Laid Bare,” International Symposium, Chichester, England, May 2003.

“Locked Room, Bloody Chamber: Surrealism, Photography, and the Architecture of Murder.”

Invited Lecture, Harvard University, The Literature Concentration, April 2003.

“X Marks the Spot: Sade, Surrealism, and the Exquisite Corpse,”

“Surrealism and Sade,” Colloque International Sade,Charleston, South Carolina, March 2003.

“Notes Toward a Psycho-Dialectic: Lacan, Crevel, Aimée,”

“The Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism in the 21st Century,” Columbia SC, Feb. 2003.

“Jules Monnerot’s Red Surrealism”

“Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic,” Modernist Studies Association 4, October 2002.

“Violette Nozières et la récriture alchimique du viol”

Invited lecture, “Ce que les femmes surréalistes ont écrit, dit, ou fait,” Paris VII, March 2002.

“The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série Noire,”

Invited Lecture, Michigan State University Department of English, January 2002.

“Le Surréalisme et l’art du crime”

Invited lecture, French Institute for Culture and Technology, Philadelphia, December 2001.

“Chester Himes: French Surrealism and American Detective Fiction”

“Americans in Paris/Paris in Americans,” The Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, July 2001.\

“On Murder, Considered As One of the Surrealist Arts: Robert Desnos in the Shadow of Jack the Ripper”

“Surrealism in 2000: Celebrating Robert Desnos,” University of London, November 2000.

“‘All the World’s Curtains Drawn’: Violette Nozières and the Surrealist Book.”

Modernist Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, October 2000.

“‘Surréaliste dans la dialectique’: Héraclite et le coup de foudre matérialiste.”

Invited Lecture, Seminaire du C.N.R.S., “Aesthesis et Empathie,”  Paris, April 2000.

“Poe, Lippard, and the Invention of Paranoia: Crime Fiction in Philadelphia.”

Poe Studies Association Sesquicentennial Conference, Richmond, VA, October 1999; and

“The American City,” Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, April 1999.

“Chandler’s Waste Land.”

Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 1999; and

North Eastern Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh PA, April 1999.         

“Jack Johnson, The Big Fight, and the Cultural Poetics of Boxing.” 

Northeast Popular Culture Association, Boston MA, October 1997.

(with David Kaiser) “Pulp Non-Fiction: Shifting Voices in the Popularization of Postwar Physics.” 

Society for Literature and Science, Atlanta GA, October 1996.

“Trafficking in the Void.” 

19th Annual Spring Symposium in American Studies, Purdue University, April 1994.

COURSES TAUGHT

Emory University, Graduate Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies and Comparative Literature

         IDS 385:  Modernism and the Archive, Spring 2005.

The Pennsylvania State University, English and American Studies

  Spring 2004:           

         AM ST 402W: Themes and Topics: “Spectacle in the City”

         AM ST 105: Popular Culture and Folklife: Crime Fiction & the Mythology of Violence

         ENGL 232: American Literature, 1865 to the Present

  Fall 2003:

         AM ST 105: Popular Culture and Folklore: Crime Fiction and the Myth of Violence

         ENGL 232: American Literature, 1865 to the Present                                                                                                   

University of Tennessee, English:

         Introduction to the Novel, Spring 2003.

         American Literature, 1865 to the Present, Spring 2003 (1 section) and Fall 2002 (2 sections).

University of Pennsylvania, English and Comparative Literature:

              Gangsters, Exiles, and Outcasts: American Modernism of the Prohibition Era, Fall 2001.

         Encountering Philadelphia, Pre-Freshman English Program, August 2001.

         An Introduction to Film Studies, (Grading Assistant),  Fall 2000.

         Encountering the City, Pre-Freshman English Program, August 2000.

         The “Whodunit?”Summer 1999.

         Dada and Surrealism,Spring 1997.

         The Unspeakable: The Representation of Horror and the Horror of Representation, Fall 1997.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Modernism; American Literature since 1865; Literary Theory; Surrealism and the Avant-Garde; Crime Fiction and Film; Transatlantic Studies of Literary and Cultural Exchange.

TRANSLATIONS

Louis Aragon, “A Note on Freedom” (1925); René Char, “Untitled [Violette Nozières]” (1933); René Crevel,  “Response to an Inquiry on Suicide” (1925) and “Notes toward a Psycho-Dialectic” (1933); Maurice Heine, “An Open Letter to Luis Buñuel" (1931); André Masson, “The Tyrrany of Time” (1926); Pierre Naville, “Fine Arts” (1925); Benjamin Péret, “Untitled [Violette Nozières]” (1933).  In Surrealism, ed. Mary Ann Caws (London: Phaidon Press, 2004).

ACADEMIC SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES

Participant in Theory reading groups at Penn State (2004) and University of Tennessee (2002).  At the University of Pennsylvania, presenter and participant, Modernist Reading Group (1999-2002), and the American Studies Reading Seminar (1999-2002).

Penn Comparative Literature Association President (1998-9).

Member-at-Large, Graduate Student Associations Council (1997-8).

Vice-President of Academic Affairs, GSAC (Fall 1997).

Comparative Literature Program Representative, GSAC (1996-7).