Department of English
Alan Singer
Alan Singer is Professor of English, teaching in the fields of literary aesthetics, critical theory, the history of criticism, art theory, the history of the novel and creative writing (fiction). Professor Singer has published a theoretical study on formal invention in the novel, A Metaphorics of Fiction: Discontinuity and Discourse in the Modern Novel, and a study of the aesthetics of narrative, The Subject As Action: Transformation and Totality in Narrative Aesthetics. He followed these works up with studies of reciprocity between aesthetics and practical reason: Aesthetic Reason: Artworks and the Deliberative Ethos and The Self-Deceiving Muse: Notice and Knowledge in the Work of Art. Professor Singer has also co-edited a volume entitled Literary Aesthetics: A Reader. His current project is an attempt to articulate a perceptual ethics in the context of aesthetic practice generally.
Professor Singer's intellectual interests as a literary theorist are reflected in his course offerings at the undergraduate and graduate levels: "Epochs of Literary Criticism," "Contemporary Literary Criticism," Literary Aesthetics," "Value and Transgression in Literary Form," "Interiority: The Literary Self After Enlightenment," and "On Literary Modernity" (co-taught with Prof. Daniel O'Hara, English) and "On The Sublime."
Professor Singer is also a novelist. He is the author of The Ox-Breadth, The Charnel Imp, Memory Wax and Dirtmouth. His new novel, The Inquisitor's Tongue, will be published in December 2011. He has published short fiction in Western Humanities Review, The Golden Handcuff's Review and TriQuarterly. His current novel-in-progress is titled Play: A Novel.
Professor Singer is also Director of the Temple Seminars in Aesthetics and Cultural Studies held every summer at Temple's Rome campus.