Stephen Arata

(1990)
Mayo Distinguished Teaching Professor
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

Degrees

Ph.D. Chicago 1990
M.A. William & Mary 1984
B.A. William & Mary 1980

Interests

The bulk of my writing and teaching has to do with British literature and culture ca. 1820-ca. 1940, with a particular emphasis on the 1880s and 1890s. Recent and ongoing work includes editions of novels by William Morris, George Gissing and H.G. Wells, essays on Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and a series of pieces on reading practices in mid- to late nineteenth century England. That last is part of book-length project on the emergence of (and cultural meanings and uses of) various forms of "professional" and intensive reading in the last part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth.

Books

  • Paying Attention: The Discipline of Reading in Great Britain, 1850-1900 (In Progress).
  • Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle, Cambridge (1996).

Edited Works

  • General Editor, with Richard Dury and Penny Fielding, The New Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, projected 38 volumes (Edinburgh University Press), in progress.
  • Ed., with J. Paul Hunter and Jennifer Wicke, A Companion to the Novel (Blackwell, forthcoming 2010)
  • Ed., H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (Norton Critical Editions, 2008).
  • Ed., with Linda Dryden and Eric Massie, Stevenson and Conrad (Texas Tech University Press, forthcoming 2008).
  • Ed., George Gissing, New Grub Street (Broadview Literary Texts, 2007).
  • Ed., William Morris, News from Nowhere (Broadview Literary Texts, 2002).

Articles

  • “The Victorian Fin de Siècle,” in New Cambridge History of English Literature: The Victorian Period, ed. Kate Flint (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • “The Impersonal Intimacy of Marius the Epicurean,” Feeling Victorian Reading, ed. Rachel Ablow and David Kurnick (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).
  • “Stevenson and Fin-de-Siècle Gothic,” in Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Penny Fielding (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).
  • “Stevenson’s Close Observances,” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 47 (August 2007). http://www.ron.umontreal.ca
  • "Late-Victorian Realism," in Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle, ed. Gail Marshall (Cambridge University Press, 2007: 165-188.
  • "On Not Paying Attention," Victorian Studies 46 (2004): 193-205.
  • "Oscar Wilde and Jesus Christ," in Wilde Writings, Contextual Conditions, ed. Joseph Bristow (University of Toronto Press, (2002): 254-72.
  • "Scott's Pageants: The Example of Kenilworth," Studies in Romanticism 40 (2001): 99-107.
  • "The Secret Agent," in A Joseph Conrad Companion, ed. Leonard Orr and Ted Billy, Greenwood Press (1999): 165-94.
  • "1897," in the Blackwell Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Herbert Tucker, Blackwell, (1998): 51-68.
  • "Realism, Sympathy, and Gissing's Fictions of Failure," Victorians Institute Journal 23 (1995): 27-49.
  • "The Sedulous Ape: Atavism, Professionalism, and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde," Criticism 37 (1995): 233-58.
  • "Strange Cases, Common Fates: Degeneration and the Victorian Fin-dè-Siecle," in Robert Newman, ed., Centuries' Ends, Narrative Means Stanford U P (1995): 171-90.
  • "Object Lessons: Reading the Museum in The Golden Bowl," in Alison Booth, ed., Famous Last Words, U Press of Virginia (1993): 199-229.
  • "A Universal Foreignness: Kipling in the Fin-de-Siecle," ELT 36 (1993): 1-38.
  • "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621-45. Rpt. in The Horror Reader, ed. Kent Gelder (2000), in Dracula: A Casebook, ed. Glennie Byron, The Norton Critical Edition of Dracula, ed. Nina Auerbach and David Skal (1997), and in The Critical Response to Bram Stoker, ed. Carol Senf (1994).

Selected Lectures and Conferences (Since 2000)

  • “Realism, Limited,” Conference on “The Novel and Its Borders” organized by The Centre for the Novel (Aberdeen, Scotland), July 2008.
  • “The Impersonal Intimacy of Marius the Epicurean,” Modern Language Association Convention (Chicago, IL), December 2007.
  • “Singing Fire: Walter Pater and the Secrets of Consciousness,” Victorians Institute Conference (Tuscaloosa, AL), November 2007.
  • Workshop Organizer and Leader, “Close Reading and the Victorians,” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference (Victoria, B.C.), October 2007.
  • “Imperial Aestheticism,” Plenary Speaker, International Conference on Nation and Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature in English, Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia (Murcia, Spain), September 2007.
  • Session Organizer, Division on Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieh Century English Literature Panel on “London 1880-1920,” Modern Language Association Convention (Philadelphia, PA), December 2006.
  • Session Organizer, Division on Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century English Literature Panel on “Particularity,” Modern Language Association Convention (Washington, DC), December 2005.
  • Moderator, “How to Read,” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference (Charlottesville, VA), October 2005.
  • “Hard, Gem-like Flames,” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference (Toronto, ON), October 2004.
  • “The Victorian Novel” and “Victorian Theatre and Poetry,” Seventeenth Annual University of Virginia and University of Oxford Seminar, on “The Victorian Age,” Trinity College (Oxford, UK), August 2004.
  • “Observing The Wrecker,” Plenary Speaker, International Conference on Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad (Edinburgh, Scotland), July 2004.
  • “Freud’s Physiognomy,” Modern Language Association Convention (San Diego, CA), December 2003.
  • “On the Value of Not Paying Attention,” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference (Bloomington, IN), October 2003
  • “Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson,” Invited Lecture, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), April 2003.
  • “Art and Pleasure, Literature and Reading,” Second International Conference on Robert Louis Stevenson (Gargnano, Italy), August 2002.
  • “‘Paper Has Been My Ruin’: Dickens and Amateur Writing,” Modern Language Association Convention (New Orleans, LA), December 2001.
  • “Poetry and Asceticism: Morris, Yeats, Auden,” Modern Language Association Convention (New Orleans, LA), December 2001.
  • “Ascetic Modernism: The Counterexamples of Morris and Auden,” Modernist Studies Association Conference (Houston, TX), October 2001.
  • “Close Reading Context,” Conference on Texts and Contexts (Charlottesville, VA), March 2001.
  • “Oscar Wilde and Jesus Christ,” Modern Language Association Convention (Washington, D.C.), December 2000.

Selected Awards and Professional Activity

  • Richard A. and Sarah Page Mayo NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor, 2007-2010
  • Nominee, State Council on Higher Education Outstanding Faculty Award, 2007, 1996
  • J. William Fulbright Scholarship (Shillong, India), 1999
  • University Seminar Summer Research Grant, 1996
  • Alumni Board of Trustees Outstanding Teaching Award, 1996
  • American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1993-1994
  • MLA: Executive Committee, Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century English Literature, 2005-2009 (Chair, 2009); Delgate Assembly, 2006-2008
  • NAVSA, Donald Gray Prize Committee, 2007-2008 (Chair, 2007)
  • Conference Organizer: 3rd Annual North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Virginia, 30 September-2 October 2005
  • Conference Organizer: "Globalizing English: Writing as Translation," University of Virgina 20-21 February 2001
  • Editorial Boards: University of Virginia Press, 2002-2005 (Chair, 2004-2005), Journal of Stevenson Studies, Voice