UC Berkeley Department of English

Kent Puckett

Associate Professor
D25E Hearst Field Annex
kpuckett@berkeley.edu

Professional Statement

I did my graduate work at the University of Virginia and Columbia University and joined Berkeley's English Department in 2002. I teach courses on nineteenth-century British literature, the novel, literary theory, psychoanalysis, and narrative theory.

Specialties

Books

	Title	Fields
	Bad Form: Social Mistakes and the Nineteenth-Century Novel What--other than embarrassment--could one hope to gain from prolonged exposure to the social mistake? Why think much about what many would like simply to forget? Bad Form argues that whatever its awkwardness, the social mistake--the blunder, the gaffe, the faux pas-is a figure of critical importance to the nineteenth-century novel. With significant new readings of a number of nineteenth-century ....	19th-Century British Narrative & the Novel Film
	Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty The present pamphlet is a conversation with well-known politcal philosopher Richard Rorty. Derek Nystrom and Kent Puckett ask the questions. "We interviewed Richard Rotty for four hours over the course of a weekend in Charlottesville. This interview is not only, we think, ideally timed, following closely several recent publications by Rorty, but captures Rorty at his most energetic."....	Critical Theory
	Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction Kent Puckett's Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction provides an account of a methodology increasingly central to literary studies, film studies, history, psychology and beyond. In addition to introducing readers to some of the field's major figures and their ideas, Puckett situates critical and philosophical approaches towards narrative within a longer intellectual history. The book reveals ....	Critical Theory Narrative & the Novel Film
	War Pictures: Cinema, Violence, and Style in Britain, 1939-1945 In this original and engaging work, author Kent Puckett looks at how British filmmakers imagined, saw, and sought to represent its war during wartime through film. The Second World War posed unique representational challenges to Britain's filmmakers. Because of its logistical enormity, the unprecedented scope of its destruction, its conceptual status as total, and the way it affected everyday lif....	20th- and 21st-Century British Cultural Studies Film

Selected Publications and Papers Delivered

Bad Form: Social Mistakes and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Against Oligarchies, Against Bosses: A Conversation with Richard Rorty, with Derek Nystrom (Charlottesville: Prickly Pear Pamphlets, 1998).

“Caucus-Racing,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction (forthcoming).

“Hardy’s 1900,” MLQ (forthcoming).

“Celia Johnson’s Face,” English Language Notes (49.2, Fall / Winter 2011).

"Before and Afterwardsness in Henry James," in Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century Novel, edited by Caroline Levine and Mario Ortiz-Roblez (Ohio State University Press, 2011).

“Some Versions of Syllepsis,” Partial Answers (Volume 9, Number 1): 177-88.

"Make No Mistake: Getting it Right in The Princess Casamassima," Novel: A Forum on Fiction Novel (Volume 43, Number 1):60-64.

Review of Gwen Hyman’s Making a Man: Gentlemanly Appetites in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel in Victorian Studies (Volume 53, Number 2): 371-373.

Review of William Flesch’s Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altrusitic Punishment, and Other Biological Compnents of Fiction in Novel: A Forum on Fiction (Volume 43, Number 3): 501-505

"The Life and Death and Death of Colonel Blimp," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 1. (2008), pp. 90-114.

Review of Kerry McSweeney’s What’s the Import?: Nineteenth-Century Poems and Contemporary Critical Practice in Victorian Studies, Vol. 51, No 1, (2008), pp. 192-94.

"Stupid Sensations: Henry James, Good Form, and Reading Middlemarch Without a Brain," The Henry James Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007), pp. 292-298

"Narrative," The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, ed. David Kastan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

"Twentieth-Century Novel Theory," Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009).

Current Research

I published a book on social mistakes (saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong thing, eating peas with your knife, etc.) in the nineteenth-century novel. I'm at work at two other projects. The first is a critical and historical account of narrative theory. I am also at work on a book that looks at ways in which difficult arguments about war are embodied in the cinematic style of some British war films.

Recent English Courses Taught

Fall, 2017

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
190/2	Research Seminar: The Historical Novel	British 19th-Century Novel Literary Theory Research Seminars
250/1	Research Seminar: Victorian Cultural Studies	British 19th-Century British 20th- and 21st-Century Literary Theory Graduate Courses

Summer, 2016

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
N117S/1	Shakespeare	Shakespeare Drama
N166/1	Special Topics: Moby-Dick and the Theory of the Novel	American Literature Novel Literary Theory Special Topics

Fall, 2015

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
45B/2	Literature in English: Late-17th Through Mid-19th Centuries	Introductory Surveys
	45B/201 -- discussion section	de Stefano, Jason
	45B/202 -- discussion section	Ehrlinspiel, Hannah Kathryn
	45B/203 -- discussion section	Gaston, Lise
125B/1	The English Novel: Dickens through Conrad	British 19th-Century Novel

Spring, 2015

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
45B/1	Literature in English: Late-17th Through Mid-19th Centuries	Introductory Surveys
	45B/101 -- discussion section	Albernaz, Joseph
	45B/102 -- discussion section	Heimlich, Timothy
	45B/103 -- discussion section	Young, Rosetta

Summer, 2015

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
N117S/1	Shakespeare: Shakespearean Tragedy	Shakespeare

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English Department
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Berkeley, CA 94720-1030
general phone: 510-642-3467

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