Daniel R. Schwarz
Fredric J. Whiton Professor of English Literature
Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
Graduate Faculty Member
- Degrees
- Brown University
Ph.d - Brown University
M.A. - Union College
B.A.
Bio
Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968. In 1998 he received Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences Russell award for distinguished teaching, and the Weiss title also speaks to his teaching prowess.
He is the author of the recent In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (2008), Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004), Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture and the widely read Imagining the Holocaust (1999). His prior books include Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (1997), Narrative and Representation in Wallace Stevens (1993)--a Choice selection for best academic book of 1993; The Case for a Humanistic Poetics (1991), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890-1930 (1989; revised 1995), Reading Joyce’s "Ulysses" (2004; orig. ed 1987); The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller (1986); Conrad: The Later Fiction (1982); Conrad: “Almayer’s Folly” through "Under Western Eyes" (1980); and Disraeli's Fiction (1979).
He has edited Joyce’s The Dead (1994) and Conrad’s The Secret Sharer (1997) in the Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism Series, and co-editor of Narrative and Culture (1994). He served as consulting editor of the six-volume edition of the Early Novels of Benjamin Disraeli (2004) for which he wrote the General Introduction, and general editor of the seven volumes Reading the American and British Novel for which he wrote one volume. He has directed nine NEH seminars, and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad, including a number of lecture tours under the auspices of the academic programs of the USIS and State Department. He has held three endowed visiting professorships. He also has published over 70 poems, some of which are available on his web page and a little fiction.
Dan Schwarz’s interests include travel (and writing about travel), art museums, theatre, and sports, especially swimming and playing tennis. His two sons are Cornell graduates: David ’89, now varsity men’s tennis coaches at Middlbury, and Jeffrey ’94, currently working in the mutualfund industry. He is married to Marcia Jacobson, a retired scholar who held the Hargis Professorship in American Literature at Auburn University.
Research and Teaching Interests
- British High Modernism, 1890-1950; Victorian studies
- Twentieth Century American Culture
- Holocaust Studies
- Relationship Between Visual Arts and Literature, especially nineteenth and twentieth century
- Narrative Theory; History and Evolution of the Novel
- The European Novel in Translation
- Relationship between Western Cultures and Asian and African cultures
- James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Wallace Stevens, Virgina Woolf, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and Picasso
Current Projects
- Crisis and Turmoil at the New York Times: The Metamorphosis of the Old Grey Lady
- Reading the European Novel (under contract)