Books
The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2023).
The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2007). Selected text for “Books at the Center” symposium, Center for the Study of the Novel, Stanford University, January 2009
Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810-1870 (Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback 2003). Winner of the Sonya Rudikoff Prize from the Northeast Victorian Studies Association.
Selected Articles and Shorter Pieces
“Departures and Returns.” n+1, June 5, 2020.
“Chapter Heads.” Book Parts. Eds. Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth. Oxford University Press, 2019. 151-164.
“We All Must Play ‘The Westing Game.'” Public Books, July 4, 2018.
“Coming in from the Cold.” n+1 31 (Spring 2018): 175-185.
“The New Fiction of Solitude.” The Atlantic 317.3 (April 2016): 92-101.
“Music, Fiction, and the Value of Attention.” The New Yorker online, January 27, 2015.
“The Chapter: A History.” The New Yorker online, October 29, 2014.
“Turgenev’s Preoccupations.” Teaching Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature. Eds. Deborah Martinsen, Cathy Popkin, Irina Reyfman. Academic Studies Press, 2014. 133-143.
“On Hegel, History, and Reading as if for Life: Response.” Victorian Studies 53.3 (Spring 2011): 437-444.
“On Not Close Reading: The Prolonged Excerpt as Victorian Critical Protocol.” The Feeling of Reading: Affective Experience and Victorian Literature. Ed. Rachel Ablow. University of Michigan Press, 2010. 11-26.
“Nostalgia and its Disciplines: A Response.” Memory Studies 3.3 (September 2010): 269-275.
“This Will Kill That.” n+1, August 11, 2010.
With David Elson and Kathy McKeown. “Extracting Social Networks from Literary Fiction.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2010). [PDF]
“Wave-Theories and Affective Physiologies: The Cognitive Strain in Victorian Novel Theories.” Victorian Studies 46.2 (Winter 2004): 206-216.
“The Disease of Temporality; or, Forgetful Reading in James and Lubbock.” The Henry James Review 25.3 (Fall 2004): 246-253.
“Trollope and the Career: Vocational Trajectories and the Management of Ambition.” Victorian Studies 45.2 (Winter 2003): 247-278.
“Reverie, Sensation, Effect: Novelistic Attention and Stendhal’s De l’Amour.” Narrative 10.1(January 2002): 47-68.
“Brushes With Fame: Thackeray and the Work of Celebrity.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 56.1 (June 2001): 23-51. [PDF]
“Austen’s Nostalgics.” Representations 73 (Winter 2001): 117-143. [PDF]
“The Clinical Novel: Phrenology and Villette.” Novel 29.3 (Spring 1996): 367-390.
Selected Reviews and Review Essays
“Outside the Museum of Literature” (review of Solenoid, Mircea Cărtărescu). n+1 45 (Spring 2023): 141-150.
“A Profession! What Has Become of Literary Studies?” (review of Professing Criticism, John Guillory. The Nation 316.5 (March 6-13 2023): 40-44.
“Millennials in Beattieland” (review of A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, Ann Beattie). Public Books, April 1, 2019.
“The Curated Self, Circa 1820” (review of L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lucasta Miller). The Atlantic 323.3 (April 2019): 36-38.
“Jane Austen Is Everything” (review of books by Helena Kelly, Devoney Looser, Kathryn Sutherland and Freya Johnston). The Atlantic 320.2 (September 2017): 92-103.
“A Postmodern Buddy-Cop Novel Sends Up the World of Semiotics” (review of The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet). The New York Times Book Review, August 20, 2017.
“The Stubborn Optimist” (review of A Grace Paley Reader). The Atlantic 319.3 (April 2017): 38-40.
“Criticism in the Twilight” (review of books by James Wood, A.O. Scott, and Mark Greif). The Nation 303.23 (December 5-12 2016): 27-31.
“Reading and Writing” (review of books by Charles Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Orner, and Adam Weiner). The New York Times Book Review, December 2 2016.
“The Email Master” (review of Nicotine and Private Novelist, Nell Zink). Public Books, October 15, 2016.
“Fictions of Capital” (review of Scandals and Abstraction, Leigh Claire La Berge). New Left Review 99 (May-June 2016): 151-159.
“‘The People v. O.J. Simpson’ as Historical Fiction.” Public Books, April 1, 2016.
“Franzen Makes Nice.” Public Books, September 1, 2015.
“Was Dickens a Thief?” (review of Death and Mr. Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis). The Atlantic 315.5 (June 2015): 38-40.
“Seventies Throwback Fiction” (review of books by Lauren Groff, A.M. Homes, Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Lethem, Norman Rush, Darcey Steinke, Meg Wolitzer). n+1 21 (Winter 2015): 147-158.
“Knausgaard’s Novel Degree Zero.” Public Books, September 1, 2014.
“Story Time” (review of books by Junot Díaz, Manuel Gonzales, Sam Lipsyte, Karen Russell, George Saunders). Public Books, September 9, 2013.
“Edward St. Aubyn and the Depressive Third Person.” Public Books, November 13, 2012.
“The Theory Generation” (review of novels by Teju Cole, Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ben Lerner, Sam Lipsyte, Lorrie Moore). n+1 14 (Summer 2012): 157-169.
“Why Bother?” (review of books by Terry Castle, Louis Menand, Martha Nussbaum). n+1 11 (Spring 2011): 161-168.
“Forget Bourdieu” (review of books by Jacques Rancière and Carl Wilson). n+1 8 (Fall 2009): 199-207.
Reference Articles and Introductions
“The Chapter in Western Literature.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. November 2016.
“Theories of the Novel.” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 6: The Nineteenth Century. Ed. M. A. R. Habib. Cambridge University Press, 2013. 506-523.
“Britain and Europe.” The Cambridge History of Victorian Literature. Ed. Kate Flint. Cambridge University Press, 2012. 622-640.
“Realism and Theories of the Novel.” The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume Three: The Nineteenth-Century Novel, 1820-1880. Eds. John Kucich and Jenny Bourne Taylor. Oxford University Press, 2012. 289-305.
“1825-1880: The Network of Nerves.” The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English. Ed. David Herman. University of Nebraska Press, 2011. 215-239.
“British Isles (19th Century).” Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel, vol. 1. General Ed. Peter Logan. Blackwell, 2011. 115-124.
“Novel Theory (19th Century).” Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel, vol. 2. General Ed. Peter Logan. Blackwell, 2011. 585-590.
“William Makepeace Thackeray.” The Cambridge Companion to English Novelists. Ed. Adrian Poole. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 149-164.
“Nostalgia.” A Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Claudia Johnson and Clara Tuite. Blackwell, 2009. 413-421.
“The Novel.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, vol. 4. Editor-in-Chief, David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006. 103-112.
“W. M. Thackeray.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, vol. 5. Editor-in-Chief, David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006. 153-157.
Introduction and Notes. W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair. Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.