简介

Nathan K. Hensley works on nineteenth-century British literature (fiction, poetry, and political writing), critical theory, and the novel. His other interests include Anglophone modernism and the cultures of globalization. In broadest terms, his work aims to account for the ability of literary and other aesthetic forms to challenge existing orders of thinking; in class and in writing, his concern is to document how historical forms struggled toward imagining the new. His current book project explores how Victorian writers expanded the capacities of literary form to account for the ongoing violence of liberal modernity. A second project, now in its early stages, aims to show how the nineteenth century used literary thinking to imagine systems so massive and distributed as to threaten the very category of individual action. His writing has appeared in Victorian Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Victorian Periodicals Review, The Stanford Arcade, and a collection, The Politics of Gender in Anthony Trollope’s Novels: New Readings for the Twenty-First Century. Review essays have appeared in the minnesota review and Criticism. He is co-editor of a special issue of RaVoN: Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net entitled "The Andrew Lang Effect: Network, Discipline, Method," and authored the entry on "Empire" for the forthcoming Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. In 2013 he served on the jury for the Caine Prize in African Writing. He directed the 2015 Lannan Symposium, "In Nature's Wake: The Art and Politics of Environmental Crisis." Hensley holds degrees from Vassar College (B.A.), the University of Notre Dame (M.A.), and Duke (Ph.D), where he was also a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow. Before coming to Georgetown, he was assistant professor of English at Macalester College. In collaboration with Professor Brian Hochman, Hensley founded and directs the Modernities Working Group. He is affiliated faculty with the Georgetown Environmental Initiative.