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Caxton Club & Howard Wilson Prize Announcements: Peter Rabinowitz

May 15 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Alumni Room, Old Main

This event is open to the public.

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When forced into an academic self-definition, PETER RABINOWITZ describes himself as a narrative theorist with a strong interest in music. In fact, though, beyond his partiality for the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, he prefers to think of himself as a committed non-specialist. He has rarely written on the same author or composer twice, and even the few exceptions (Raymond Chandler, Shostakovich, Dostoevsky) hardly fall into any logical pattern. His interests range broadly, from Proust to hard-boiled fiction, from ragtime to opera, from Chekhov to the nearly forgotten E.D.E.N. Southworth. He is the author of Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and The Politics of Interpretation (1987); co-author (with Michael Smith) of Authorizing Readers: Resistance and Respect in the Teaching of Literature (1998); co-author (with James Phelan, David Herman, Brian Richardson and Robyn Warhol) of Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012); and co-editor (with Phelan) of Understanding Narrative (1994) and A Companion to Narrative Theory (2005). Rabinowitz's academic essays have appeared in a wide variety of books and journals, including PMLA, Critical Inquiry, Black Music Research Journal and 19th-Century Music. Rabinowitz is also co-editor of the Ohio State University Press Series on Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. As a music critic, he writes extensively in non-academic venues as well. He is a contributing editor of Fanfare and was a regular contributor to International Record Review from its first issue to its last. Rabinowitz is Carolyn C. and David M. Ellis '38 Distinguished Teaching Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College. 

Following his lecture, Professor Rabinowitz will announce this year's winners for the Howard Wilson Prize in Literary Criticism.