Kent Puckett
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Ida May and William J. Eggers Jr. Chair in English
Wheeler Hall, Room 403Wednesday, 9:30-11
kpuckett@berkeley.eduSpecialties
?
Critical TheoryNarrative & the Novel19th-Century BritishPoetryFilm
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.
Books What happens when we vote? What are we counting when we count ballots? Who decides what an election should look like and what it should mean? And why do so many people believe that some or all elections are rigged? Moving between intellectual history....(read more)
Winner of the 2018?Barbara Perkins and George Perkins Prize of the International Society for the Study of Narrative.Kent Puckett's Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction?provides an?account of a methodology increasingly central to literary stu....(read more)
FIELDS:
Critical Theory
Narrative & the Novel
Film
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....(read more)
FIELDS:
20th- and 21st-Century British
Cultural Studies
Film
Selected Publications and Papers Delivered
War Pictures: Cinema, Violence, and Style in Britain, 1939-1945?(Fordham University Press, 2017).
Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction?(Cambridge University Press, 2016).
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).
"J. M. Keynes and the?Visible?Hands,"?Public Books, January?15, 2021: https://www.publicbooks.org/j-m-keynes-and-the-visible-hands/.
"Story, Discourse,?Dunkirk," modernism/modernity (print plus), July 7, 2020:?https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0149.
"RAND Narratology,"?Representations,??Vol. 149??No. 1,??Winter 2020,?31-72.
“‘Postscript: 1976’: E. P. Thompson and the River of Fire,” in?Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 47, Nos. 4, 2019.
“Keyword: Democracy,”?Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 46, Nos. 3-4, 2018.?
“Epic/Novel,” in?The Cambridge Companion to the Novel, ed.?Eric Bulson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“Narrative Theory’s?Longue durée,” in?The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Theory, ed.?Matthew Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“Why Nixon Is Tricky for Novelists,”?Public Books, May 24, 2017: http://www.publicbooks.org/why-nixon-is-tricky-for-novelists.
“Let’s Get Real, Real Gone for a Change: Jameson’s Antinomies,” invited response to Frederic Jameson’s?The Antinomies of Realism,?Victorian Studies,?Vol. 57, No. 1, Autumn 2014, 105-112.
Introduction to?“Search,” a special forum in?Representations,?Vol. 127 No. 1, Summer 2014, 55-56.
Introduction to “Financialization and the Culture Industry,” a special issue of?Representations, co-authored with Dan Blanton and Colleen Lye, Vol. 126 No. 1, Spring 2014, 1-8.
Response to "Deontatively, Technically, Literally," a special issue of?Represenations, eds., Elaine Freedgood and Cannon Schmitt, April 21, 2014:?https://www.representations.org/two-responses-to-denotatively-technically-literally.
“Caucus-Racing,”?Novel: A Forum on Fiction,?Vol.?47, No. 1, 2014, 11-23.
“Hardy’s 1900,”?MLQ,?Vol.?75, No. 1, 57-75.
“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.
English Department Classes
fall, 2022
45B/1
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Centuries
Introductory Surveys
45B/101 -- discussion section
No instructor assigned yet.
117B/1
Shakespeare: Tragedy
Shakespeare
spring, 2022
45B/1
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Centuries
Introductory Surveys
45B/101 -- discussion section
Weidman, Pamela
45B/102 -- discussion section
Weidman, Pamela
45B/103 -- discussion section
Dowling, Rumur
45B/104 -- discussion section
Dowling, Rumur
45B/105 -- discussion section
Zodrow, Kristin
45B/106 -- discussion section
Zodrow, Kristin
203/3
Graduate Readings: Novel Theory, Narrative Theory, and the Sociology of the Novel
Novel
Literary Theory
Graduate Courses
spring, 2020
160/1
Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism
Literary Theory
246H/1
Victorian Period
Graduate Courses
Back