Dr Christopher Peterson

Chris Peterson

Biography

Christopher Peterson received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California in 2002. In addition to USC, he has taught at the University of California (Davis, and Los Angeles), and Claremont McKenna College in California.


Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

His research focuses on 19th and 20th century American literature, race and sexuality studies, as well as critical theory.


Grants / Current Projects

His current research focuses on the intersection of race and animality in works by Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Chandler Harris, Richard Wright, Philip Roth, and J.M. Coetzee.

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Awards and Recognition

Nomination of Kindred Specters for the Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book (2008).

Nomination of Kindred Specters for the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize from The American Studies Association (2008).

Josephine De Kármán Trust Dissertation Fellowship (2001-02).

Marta Feuchtwanger Dissertation Fellowship (2001-02).

Ahmanson Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2000-01).

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Publications

Books:

Animal Traces (in progress).

Kindred Specters: Death, Mourning, and American Affinity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

Journal Articles:

"Of Canines and Queers." Review of Melancholia's Dog: Reflections on Our Animal Kinship, by Alice Kuzinar, in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15.2 (2009).

"Slavery's Bestiary: Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus Tales" (under review).

"The Aping Apes of Poe and Wright: Race, Animality, and Mimicry in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Native Son. Forthcoming in New Literary History (2009).

"Derrida’s Ouija Board." Forthcoming in Qui Parle 17.2 (2009).

"The Return of the Body: Judith Butler’s Dialectical Corporealism," Discourse 28.2 & 3 (2006): 153-177.

"Beloved’s Claim," Modern Fiction Studies 52.3 (2006): 548-569.

"The Haunted House of Kinship: Miscegenation, Homosexuality, and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! The New Centennial Review 4.1 (2004): 227-265.

"Possessed by Poe: Reading Poe in an Age of Intellectual Guilt," Cultural Values 5.2 (2001): 198-220.

"Resenting AIDS: Paranoia, Punishment, Performativity," Qui Parle 12.1 (2000): 145-176.

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Conference Papers

"The Return of the Body: Judith Butler’s Dialectical Corporealism." American Comparative Literature Association, Long Beach (April 2008).

"Raging Against Death: American Exceptionalism and the 'War on Terrorism.'" American Studies Association, Oakland (October 2006).

Kindred Specters (book proposal). Work-in-Progress Seminar, Donald Pease director. The Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College (June 2004).

"Beloved’s Claim." American Studies Association, Hartford (October 2003).

"The Kinship of Strangers." Introduction of Professor Judith Butler and opening remarks for the USC Symposium on "Kinship Trouble" (February 2003).

"Kindred Specters: Mourning, Miscegenation, and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!" USC Symposium on "Psychoanalysis and Difference," Professor Barbara Johnson, respondent (March 2001).

"Giving Up the Ghost: Materiality, Conjuration, and Social Death in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Woman Tales." MLA, Chicago (December 1999).

"Dead Names/Ghostly Bodies: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." American Name Society, San Francisco (December 1998).

Panel Respondent, "Name Functions: As Tropes, As Icons." MLA, San Francisco (December 1998).

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