Professor
email: ralphclare@boisestate.edu
Ralph Clare is Associate Professor of English at Boise State University, specializing in post-45 American literature. He is the author of Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture (Rutgers UP, 2014) and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace (Cambridge UP, 2018). His latest book project, Metaffective Fiction: Structuring Feeling in Contemporary American Literature, explores the role of emotion and affect in post-postmodern fiction and the neoliberal era in works by David Foster Wallace, Salvador Plascencia, Sheila Heti, Dave Eggers, and Ben Lerner, among others.
Education
- Ph.D., English Literature, Stony Brook University (SUNY, Stony Brook)
- M.F.A., Creative Writing (Fiction), California State University, Long Beach
- M.A., English Literature, California State University, Long Beach
- B.A., English Literature, San Diego State University
Interests
20th and 21st C. American Literature and Culture, Post-45, Film, Marxism and Post-Marxism, Economic approaches to literature, the New Materialisms
Recent Publications
Books
- The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace (Cambridge UP, 2018)
- Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture (Rutgers University, 2014).
Articles and Book Chapters:
- “Credit Where Debit is Due: Finance and Consumer Credit in Popular Culture” in Cultural Studies in the Digital Age, eds. Bill Nericcio and Antonio Rafel (SDSU Press/CODE[X], forthcoming 2021).
- “Colson Whitehead.” (3300 word essay). Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020, eds. Patrick O’Donnell and Stephen J. Burn. Wiley-Blackwell (forthcoming, 2020).
- “Becoming Autotheory.” Arizona Quarterly 76.1 (Spring 2020): 85-107. Special Issue on “Autotheory.” ed. Robyn Wiegman.
- “Metaffective Fiction: Structuring Feeling in Post-Postmodern American Fiction.” Textual Practice (2019): 1-17. Special issue on “American Fiction After Postmodernism.”
- “How We Think of Our Lives: Boredom in Contemporary Literature” (2200 word essay)for the Institute of Art and Ideas (Feb 2019, online).
- “Pynchon and Film in the Post-Celluloid Era” in The New Pynchon Studies, ed. Joanna Freer(Cambridge University Press, 2019): 247-266.
- “Why Kathy Acker Now?” (2800 word essay) in Los Angeles Review of Books (May 2018 online).
Courses
- Engl 278 Survey of American Literature II,1865-Present
- Engl 275 Introduction to Literary Studies
- Engl 383 Post-Racial Fictions
- Engl 387 20th Century American Fiction
- Engl 383 Corporations and Consumerism in Contemporary American Fiction and Film
- Engl 392 Literature and Film
- Engl 424 Sincerity and Authenticity in Contemporary American Fiction, Film, and Pop Culture
- Engl 424 Postmodern American Fiction
- Engl 530: Periodizing Contemporary American Literature and the Present
- Engl 550 Sincerity, Affect, and Authenticity in the Neoliberal Age
- Engl 588 Introduction to Critical Theory