Natania Rosenfeld
Professor of English
 |
| Contact 309-341-7497 nrosenfe@knox.edu |
General Interests
"Some current projects of mine include:
- A critical book dealing with modernist tropes in English prose before and after the Holocaust, in the work of such writers as Walter Pater, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Lore Segal, Philip Roth, Michael Ondaatje, Martin Amis, and W.G. Sebald.
- A manuscript of poems dealing with childhood and family history; migration and travel among history-laden places in the world; my relationship to texts and memory as a woman and a Jew; the strangeness of the animal and human worlds.
- A collection of memoir essays in which a vision is formed through errancy and movement. The book is autobiographical in exploring the formation of my own mind through travel, books, art and, especially, the clash and combination of several languages."
Years at Knox: 1998 to present
Education
Ph.D., English, 1992, Princeton University.
B.A., English, 1985, Bryn Mawr College.
Teaching Interests
English literature, modern British literature, Irish literature, American literature, Jewish literature, creative non-fiction, literature of the Holocaust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce.
Selected Professional Accomplishments
Honors/Grants
Fellowship at the Jentel Artists' Residency Program, for work on "Hidden," August-September 2009.
Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, November-December 2004, for work on "The Translators' Daughter." Second fellowship awarded for continued work on essays and fiction in January-February 2006, third for work on "The Flat Land," November-December 2007, fourth for work on various projects, December 2008.
Finalist for poetry ms. in three first-book contests: the Prairie Schooner/University of Nebraska Press contest (2003), the Philip Levine Awards (2005), and the Barrow Street book contest (2008). Semi-finalist in Elixir Press and Sarabande Books competitions, 2006.
NEH Summer Stipend for work on "Unsettling English Modernism: Improprieties of Twentieth-Century Literature," 2001.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Grant for seminar participation, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 1998.
Publications
"Love and Gusto(n)," forthcoming in Hotel Amerika.
"Princeling," Fairy Tale Review, The Aquamarine Issue 2009.
"Omen in Cornwall," roger: an art & literary magazine, 2009."The Tenant," in DIAGRAM, 9.2, Summer 2009.
"In a Cold Country," in Tammy, Spring 2009.
"Immersions," in Lake Effect, Spring 2009.
"Zoo," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2009.
"Double Portraits: Friendship and Seeing," in Southwest Review, Autumn 2008.
"He and I" and "Hampstead Heath: A Sketch," in /nor, Spring 2008.
"Longing," in /nor, Fall 2007.
"The Minder," in The Fairy Tale Review, Winter 2007.
"Instruments," in RHINO, Spring 2007.
"In Praise of the Small," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 2006.
"How We Sleep," in Crab Orchard Review, Fall 2006.
"Flirting, Redux," in Lake Effect, Fall 2006.
"Life-Size Sculptures: Women," in Hotel Amerika, Spring 2006.
"In a Cold City," "Hammersmith," "Rittenhouse Square," and "Bodies," in Another Chicago Magazine, Spring 2006.
"A Year on the Prairie," in Post Road, Fall 2005.
"Renewal," exhibition essay on the work of New York painter Deborah Freedman, printed as brochure for her show at the Enderlin Gallery, Roxbury, NY, Fall 2005.
"Enthrallments," in Hotel Amerika, Fall 2004.
"Privacy and Hunger: Looking at Lucian Freud," in Ninth Letter, Fall 2004.
Presentations
Bilingual Reading, American Literary Translators‘ Association Conference, Pasadena, November 2009.
"Modern and Post-modern Street Haunting: Virginia Woolf and W.G. Sebald," Paper, W.G. Sebald: An International and Interdisciplinary Conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 2008.
"Individual Voices: A Discussion of the 'I' in Literary Nonfiction." Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, Virginia.
"Cunning in Exile: Leopold Bloom’s Dirtyclean Pockets." Nineteenth International James Joyce Symposium (and the Bloomsday Centennial), Dublin, Ireland, 2004.
Reading of individual poems as part of a panel on contemporary Jewish women writers, organized by S.L. Wisenberg, at annual AWP convention in Chicago, 2004.
"Male Cannon-Fodder and Female Waste: Exploited and Gendered Bodies in English Novels of World Wars I and II." "The Flesh Made Text: Bodies, Theories, Cultures in the Post-Millennial Era," Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, 2003.
"W.G. Sebald and Holocaust Memory." Parkes Institute for Jewish/Non-Jewish Relations, Southampton University, England, April 29, 2003.
"W.G. Sebald and Jewish Memory." Midwest Jewish Studies Association Conference, Case Western Reserve University, 2002.
"Other People's Proprieties: The Unsettling Female Refugee in the Work of Lore Segal." Conference on Jewish Women Writers and Twentieth-Century British Culture, Brunel University, Twickenham Campus, London, 2002.
"Reading by Candlelight: The English Patient and the End(s) of Aestheticism." Modernist Studies Association Conference, University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
"Excess and the Discarded Woman in Three Modernist Decades." Modernist Studies Association Conference, Rice University, 2001.
"The Floating Island: Dislocating England, Relocating Modernism from Forster to Jhabvala and Segal." Modernist Studies Association Convention, Penn State, 1999.
"Strange Crossings: Colonial Fictions and the Engagement of Virginia Stephen and Leonard Woolf." Modern Language Association, 1998.
"Double Crossings: Gendered Travel in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Clark Blaise/Bharati Mukherjee's Days and Nights in Calcutta." Seventh International Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation, University of Mainz at Germersheim, Germany, 1998.
"The Absent Jew and the Politics of Character in Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Manifesto." Northeast Modern Language Association, 1998.
Campus & Community Involvement
Organizer, "Modernist Excess" panel.
Reader for Literature, Interpretation, Theory (LIT).
Consulting/Contributing Editor, The American Poetry Review.
What Students Say
"Natania Rosenfeld's intellect and rigor ensure that her students leave her classrooms better thinkers and better communicators. But, what's more and possibly more important, she reminds her students that art is not merely entertaining and pleasurable--it is vital. The precision of vision and articulation that she demands from her students, and which she works hard to help them achieve, finds its origin in her belief that the study of literature is also an ethical act. Her classrooms and the texts that populate them often expose our vulnerabilities--at the least our ambivalence--and Professor Rosenfeld makes a space for students to wade into those murky waters. She wades in with them. She is unflinching; her enthusiasm, her tough questions, and her conviction that what we think and say matter are catching."
-Elizabeth S. Marzoni, English Major, History Minor
"Natania is deeply invested in all of her students and is very approachable. She encourages everyone to participate in class and guides discussions with challenging follow-up questions. Like all good professors, she sees teaching as an opportunity for her to learn as well as her students. She's the kind of person who prefers to give you feedback over coffee so that she can get to know you as well. Besides being an excellent teacher, Natania is a proficient writer, juggling poetry, personal essays, academic articles and fiction with enviable ease. She has a true passion for literature and is a fantastic role model for any prospective writer or teacher."
-Laura Zuber, English and Spanish Major