Katherine Snyder

Title:

Associate Professor and Director of Berkeley Connect in English

Specialties:

20th- and 21st-Century British

20th- and 21st-Century American

Gender & Sexuality Studies

Narrative & the Novel

Biography:

My first book, Bachelors, Manhood, and the Novel, 1850-1925, considered the rise of British and American modernist narrative in relation to the history of masculinity. Over the past several years, I have turned in my research and teaching to contemporary fiction, with a particular interest in post-apocalyptic, post-traumatic, and post-9/11 novels.

My current book project, Novel Traces: Rewriting the Past in the Post-9/11 Present, identifies a hitherto unrecognized cluster of post-9/11 novels that extensively rewrite canonical works of literature from various historical moments. While some of these post-9/11 novels explicitly allude to their significant literary precursors, others rework their predecessor texts more obliquely. Whether patent or latent, these contemporary acts of fictional revision contribute to our understanding of our continuing post-9/11 moment while reshaping the present meanings of our literary and historical past.

Current Research:

My current book project, Novel Traces: Rewriting the Past in the Post-9/11 Present, identifies a hitherto unrecognized cluster of post-9/11 novels that extensively rewrite canonical works of literature from various historical moments. While some of these post-9/11 novels explicitly allude to their significant literary precursors, others rework their predecessor texts more obliquely. Whether patent or latent, these contemporary acts of fictional revision contribute to our understanding of the continuing post-9/11 moment while reshaping the present meanings of our literary and historical past.

Role:

Books

Bachelors, Manhood, and the Novel, 1850-1925

Katherine Snyder

Monograph, 1999

Selected Publications

RECENT ARTICLES

"From Austerlitz to Open City: Teju Cole's Post-9/11 Palimpsest," under review.

“Teaching The Handmaid’s Tale in Adaptation,” Approaches to Teaching Margaret Atwood. Ed. Lauren Rule Maxwell (Modern Language Association of America, 2024).

“Gatsby’s Ghost: Post-Traumatic Memory and National Literary Tradition in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland,” Contemporary Literature, 54:3, Fall 2013.

"Screen Memories: Maternal After-Images in Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Novels," in Women's Utopian and Dystopian Fiction, ed. Sharon Wilson (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013).

“’Time to go’: The Post-Apocalyptic and the Post-Traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” Studies in the Novel, 43:4, Winter 2011.

RECENT REVIEWS

"The End of the End of the World," review of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam, at publicbooks.org, October 10, 2013.

Review of Roger J. Porter's Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing The Secret Lives of Fathers and Peggy Whitman Prenshaw's Composing Selves: Southern Women and Autobiography, in American Literature, 84:3, September 2012.

“It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” review of Margaret Atwood’s The Year of The Flood, in Women’s Review of Books, 27:2, 2010.

RECENT PRESENTATIONS

"The Problem of Interiority in Never Let Me Go," SNS, Ithaca, June 2018

"Paranoia and the Limits of Interiority in The Turn of the Screw and Never Let Me Go," ACLA, Utrecht, March 2017

"Written, Erased, Rewritten: Tracing European Atrocity in Teju Cole’s Open City," MLA International Symposium, Dusseldorf, June 2016

“ 'How It Strikes a Contemporary’: Woolfian Remains in Three 21st Century City Novels,” Society for Novel Studies Biennial Conference (SNS), Pittsburgh, May, 2016

“Converging Cultures: LitCrit Meets FanFic”, ACLA, Cambridge, MA March 2016

“The Contemporary Turn: The Way We Read ‘Now’,” Roundtable on Periodization, MLA, Austin, January 2016

"In Between Time: Periodization and the Problem of the Contemporary," invited presentation, Interdisciplinary Working Group on The Contemporary, Stanford University, March 2015.

"ReKindling a World: Time Travel, Slaughterhouse Five, and Post-9/11 Fanfiction," MLA, Vancouver, January 2015.

"From Austerlitz to Open City: Reading Teju Cole’s Intertextual, Urban Palimpsest," ACLA, New York City, March 2014.

Respondent, Panel on “The Contemporary,” 20th/21st-Century Colloquium Series, UC Berkeley, March 2014.

"Evidence and Argument in 'Close Reading,'" Panel on "Evidence and Argument in the Disciplines," Reading And Composition Colloquium Series, UC Berkeley, February 2014.

Roundtable on Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy. Margaret Atwood Society, MLA, Chicago, January 2014.

Respondent, Panel on "Immigration and the American Novel," Consortium on the Novel, UC Berkeley, November 2013.

"Intertext, Palimpsest, Open City," invited lecture, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, November 2013.

"From Austerlitz to Open City: Reading Teju Cole’s Intertextual, Urban Palimpsest," ASAP, Detroit, October 2013.

"Ghosts in the Machine: Intertextuality in Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days," ALA, San Francisco, CA May 2012.

"The 'terrible gift': National Literary Tradition and Intertextuality in Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days," Consortium on the Novel, UC Berkeley, May 2012.

“Gatsby’s Ghost and the Melancholic National Past in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland,” MLA, Seattle, January 2012.

“Personal Trauma and Global Apocalypse in Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood,” MLA, Seattle, January 2012.

“Returning from the Past: The Ghostly Presence of Modernist Trauma Narrative in Post-9/11 Fiction,” Rocky Mountain MLA, Scottsdale, 2011.

“The Post-Apocalyptic as Post-Traumatic in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake,” Contemporary Women’s Writing Network Conference, San Diego, 2010.

"Close Reading as Conversation," National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Philadelphia, 2009