Gabriele Schwab bio & publications

Chancellor’s Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Department of English & Comparative Literature
Director of the Critical Theory Institute, 1996-1997 to 2000-2001
gmschwab@uci.edu

Gabriele Schwab is Chancellor’s Professor of English and Comparative Literature and a previous Director of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California at Irvine. Her books in English include Subjects without Selves: Transitional Texts in Modern Fiction (Harvard UP, 1994), and The Mirror and the Killer-Queen: Otherness in Literary Language (Indiana UP, 1997). She has published in the fields of literary studies, critical theory, reader-response theory, cultural criticism, psychoanalysis, literature and anthropology, and literature and science, as well as English, Irish, American, French, German and Japanese literatures. Her major research interests are in critical theory with an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies and on twentieth century literature and culture. In her work she has developed a theory of reading as cultural contact from various interdisciplinary perspectives, exploring the intersections between literature, politics, culture and psychology. Her work in progress includes a theoretical book on the cultural unconscious and another book on the anthropological turn in literary studies titled “Imaginary Ethnographies.” She is also co-editing a collection of essays for the series of the Critical Theory Institute, Futures of Property & Personhood (forthcoming, Columbia UP).

Selected Publications:
Books
“Imaginary Ethnographies: Performative Encounters between Literature and Theory.” Work in Progress.
“Politics, Aesthetics and the Unconscious: The Cultural Turn in Literary Theory.”
Work in Progress.
Forces of Globalization. Ed. Gabriele Schwab. New York: Columbia UP, forthcoming (2002).
The Mirror and the Killer-Queen: Otherness in Literary Language. Theories of Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Subjects without Selves. Transitional Texts in Modern Fiction. Adapted from German by the author. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994.
Entgrenzungen und Entgrenzungsmythen. Zur Subjektivität im modernen Roman. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1987.
Samuel Beckett's Endgame with Subjectity. Towards a Psychoaesthetic Theory of Modern Drama. English and American Studies in German: Summaries of Theses and Monographs: A Supplement to Anglia, 1982.
Samuel Becketts Endspiel mit der Subjectivität. Entwurf einer Psychoästhetik des modernen Theaters. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981.

Selected Articles:
“Restriction and Mobility. The Dynamics of Cultural Contact in Literature.” Ed. Michael Lackey. Liminality, Literary Theory and the Humanities. New York: Suny P, forthcoming (2001).
“Cultural Texts and Endopsychic Scripts.” Ed. H. Porter Abbott. On the Origin of Fictions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives . Spec. issue of SubStance A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism. 94/95 (30.1&2 March 2001).
“Cosmological Mediations on the In/Human: Lyotard and Beckett.” To Jean-François Lyotard. Spec. issue of Parallax 6.4 (October 2000): 58-75.
“Xenogenese und Posthumanität, Anthropozentrische Subjekte in extraterrestrischen Welten,” Ed. Vittoria Borsò. Die Moderne der Jahrhundertwende(n). Düsseldorf: 2000.
“If only I were not obliged to manifest: Wolfgang Iser’s Aesthetics of Negativity.” Ed. Jean-Paul Riquelme. Spec. issue of New Literary History on Wolfgang Iser 31.1 (Winter 2000): 73-89
“Restriktion und Mobilität. Zur Dynamik des literarischen Kulturkontakts.” Working Paper No. 115, 1999. John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien der freien Universität, Berlin (1999): 1-23.
“Steps toward a Millennial Imaginary: Charis Cussins’ Confessions of a Bioterrorist.”
Eds. E. Ann Kaplan and Susan Squier. Playing Dolly: technocultural formations, fantasies, and fictions of assisted reproduction. Millennial Shifts. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1999.
“Restriktion und Mobilität. Zur Dynamik des literarischen Kulturkontakts.” Eds. Stefan Rieger, Schamma Schahadat and Martin Weinberg. Interkulturalität. Zwischen Inszenierung und Archiv. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag (1999): 47-64.
“Words and Moods: The Transference of Literary Knowledge.” SubStance. A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism. XXVI.3 (1997): 107-127.
“Literary Transference and the Vicissitudes of Culture.” Eds. Jürgen Schlaeger and Herbert Grabes. The Anthropological Turn in Literary Studies. REAL. A Bilingual Journal on American Studies. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1997. 115-141.