Joshua D. Rothman
About me
I am a sixth-year graduate student in the English Department at Harvard University. My main interest is in consciousness and the novel. I'm interested in novels, in all languages and of all periods; in the theory and history of the novel; in science, history of science, and philosophy of science; in philosophy of mind, psychology, cognitive theory, and linguistics; and in the intellectual history of materialism and spirituality. My dissertation is about the novelistic account of consciousness.
I am originally from Washington, DC, lived for four years in New Hampshire, went to college in New Jersey, and now live happily in Boston, Massachusetts.
Teaching
2008-2009
Whiting Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.
2007-2008
Fall: The Classic Phase of the Novel; Intensive Writing for Policy and Politics (at the Kennedy School of Government).
Spring: American Literary Emergence; Science and Literature in the 20th Century (junior tutorial).
2006-2007
Fall: American Novel, Dreiser to the Present; Finnegans Wake (junior tutorial).
Spring: Joyce and Aestheticism; Science and Literature in the 20th Century (junior tutorial).
2005-2006
Fall: Major British Authors I.
Spring: Postwar British and American Novel.
My résumé
Academics
Harvard University, Department of English, Cambridge, MA
Fall 2003 to present
Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature.
Winthrop Sargeant Prize: "Hamlet's Eloquent Delay" (2005).
Helen Choate Bell Prize: "'Damn Consistency': Emerson, Hegel, and the Problem of Irony" (2005).
Whiting Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2008-2009.
The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA
Fall 2007 to present
Instructor in Public Policy, teaching PAL-118M, "Intensive Writing for Politics and Policy."
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Fall 1998 to Spring 2002
B.A. in English; thesis in the Program in Creative Writing.
Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
Fall 1994 to Spring 1998
With classics diploma for studies in Latin and Greek.
On the Job
Department of English, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Fall 2002
Worked as part of the Eclipse Archiving Project to create a digital archive of out-of-print poetry journals and publications. The archive includes texts from Zero to Nine and LANGUAGE, and will serve as both a scholarly and a literary resource.
Digital Kiwi, Inc., Princeton, NJ
1999 to 2001
As Partner and Creative Director of Digital Kiwi, a student-run internet consulting company, led teams providing information architecture, interface design, and project management services. Clients ranged from venture-backed startups to established enterprises.
Area51Media, Inc., Washington, DC
1998 to 1999
As Lead Designer for Area51, produced graphic design and marketing/branding solutions for Washington, DC-area companies. Clients included financial and marketing firms as well as contractors to the Federal Government. Led teams of interdisciplinary specialists.
Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., Inc., Arlington, VA
Summer 1995, 1996, 1998
At FBR, one of the nation's fastest-growing investment banks, gained wide exposure to finance generally and investment research in particular. Coordination of FBR's online computing stock research initiative; development of editorial process for the firm's investment research reporting.
WETA Public Television, Washington, DC
Summer 1997
In WETA's online services division, helped to produce online companion sites for the station's original programming (notably Washington Week in Review), and to build an online resource for parents and teachers of learning-disabled children, LDOnline.
Mixed Metaphor Software, Exeter, NH
1995 to 1997
As part of Mixed Metaphor Software, a student-run software entertainment company, helped to develop Harry the Handsome Executive, downloaded by more than 120,000 gamers since its release in June of 1996.
Coursework
Silent Reading and Sustained Visual Attention
Theories of Modernism (Painting, Music, Literature)
Reading in Victorian Culture
Poetry, Politics, and Prophecy in the 18th Century
The Invention of Middle English Literature
The Intellectual Life of the Profession
Art and Thought of the Cold War
Development of the Victorian Novel
T. S. Eliot
Henry, Alice, and William James
Middle English Literature
Samuel Beckett and W. H. Auden
Comparative Romantic Theory
Describing the Lyric
Contemporary North American poetry (1960-2002)
Contemporary and 20th century novel
Victorian novel and non-fiction; literature of the Fin de Siecle
Independent work: Faulkner and Freud; James, Eliot and Derrida
Novels of William Faulkner, Henry James, Jane Austen
20th century avant-garde (Jarry, Ballard, Warhol, Goldsmith, et. al.)
Freud and psychoanalysis
Literature and ethics
Creative writing: Edmund White, Jeffrey Eugenides, J. C. Oates (senior thesis advisor)