Faculty

James Dawes

Associate Professor of English and American Literature
Founder and Director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism

Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1998-2001
Ph.D. in English and American Literature, Harvard University, 1998
M.A. in English and American Literature, Harvard University, 1994
M. Phil. in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, University of Cambridge (King's College), 1992
B.A. in Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with distinction in English, University of Pennsylvania, 1991

James Dawes teaches US and comparative literature. He is the author of That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity (Harvard University Press, 2007) and The Language of War (Harvard University Press, 2002) as well as numerous articles on topics including literary and language theory, international law and human rights, trauma, literature and medical studies, Shakespeare, aesthetic theory, and pedagogical technique. He has appeared as the feature guest on radio interviews ranging from live, one-hour National Public Radio programs to the BBC Weekend News, and has been interviewed by The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and many other newspapers.

Professor Dawes's teaching interests include, among other things, US literature from all periods, literary theory and cultural studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies (ethics, law, psychology, sociology, philosophy, medicine, human rights). He is the founder and Director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester College, and a member of the Editorial Board of American Literature (2007-2009).

Areas of Study

• American literature
• Countercultures
• Human rights
• Literary and language theory
• Violence and trauma
• Literature and philosophy

Fall 2009 Courses

• Intro to Creative Writing
• Nineteenth Century American Literature: American Renaissance
• American Literature 1900-1945

Previous Macalester Courses

• The Novel
• Justice
• Studies in Literature: Human Rights in the Humanities
• The American Novel
• Crafts of Writing: Nonfiction
• American Literature / Early Republic
• The American Novel: 20th-century American Modernism
• 19th Century American Literature
• Seminar in American Authors

Books

• That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity (Harvard University Press, 2007)
• The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the United States from the Civil War through World War II (Harvard University Press, 2002, paperback release 2004)

Published Articles

• "The Gulf Wars and the US Peace Movement." American Liteary History 21 (Summer 2009): 418-428.
• "Human Rights in Literary Studies." Human Rights Quarterly 31 (May 2009): 394-409.
• "The American War Novel." The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Second World War. Ed. Marina MacKay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• "Fictional Feeling: Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and the American Gothic." American Literature 76 (September 2004): 437-466.
• "Atrocity and Interrogation." Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 249-266. Reprinted under the same title in War Narratives and American Culture. Eds. Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones. Santa Barbara: American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, 2005.
• "Language, Violence, and Human Rights Law." Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 11 (Summer 1999): 215-250.
• "Narrating Disease: AIDS, Consent and the Ethics of Representation." Social Text 43 (Fall 1995): 27-44.
• "Truth and Decay in Shakespeare's Sonnets." Cahiers Elisabethains 47 (April 1995): 43-53.
• "Masculinity and Transgression in Robert Frost." American Literature 65 (June 1993): 297-312.
• "The War in American Fiction." Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Second World War, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
• "War Writing." American History through Literature 1870-1920. Eds. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006.
• "Drama and Ethics, Grief and Privacy: The Case of Eugene O'Neill." Eugene O'Neill Review 17 (Spring/Fall 1993): 83-92.
• Book Review: "Shadows of Ethics." American Literature 73 (December 2001).
• Book Reviews: "The Scandal of Pleasure" and "Modernism and Morality." American Literature 75 (March 2003).
• Book Reviews: "Crimes of Art and Terror" and "America’s Culture of Terrorism." American Literature 76 (December 2004).
• Book Reviews: "A Forgetful Nation" and "The Languages of Difference." American Literature 78 (June 2006).
• "Losing It and Getting It Back: A Teacher's Basics for Leading Seminars." Voices of Experience: Observations of Senior Teaching Fellows at Harvard University. Ed. Mary-Ann Winkelmes and James Wilkinson. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

Awards and Honors

Macalester College

• Finalist, 2008 Minnesota Book Awards
• Finalist, 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Peacemaker of the Year Category
• DeWitt Wallace Research and Travel Grant, 2008 ($6,000)
• Hiett Prize Award 2006 ($5,000)
• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Junior Faculty Fellow (2004-2005)
• National Humanities Center Fellow (2004-2005) (declined)
• Lilly Fellow, Macalester College (received Lilly Course Development Award, Fall 2001)
• Reviewed manuscripts for Harvard University Press, PMLA, Cultural Critique
• Judge for nonfiction in the 18th annual Minnesota Book Awards (2006)

Harvard University

• William F. Milton Fund Recipient, 2001 (a $24,000 research grant from the Harvard Medical School to fund research in language theory)
• Fellow in the Program in Ethics, 1994-1995 (a one-year appointment in the John F. Kennedy School of Government; Fellows conduct independent research and work in association with distinguished academics in the fields of law, business, medicine, and the humanities)
• Selected for the Derek Bok Center's Senior Teaching Fellows Program, 1996-1997 (a workshop for teaching fellows in the arts and sciences who received the highest ratings in University-wide evaluations; met biweekly to research pedagogical techniques and to promote the quality of teaching at Harvard through such initiatives as the Senior Teaching Fellows Mentoring Program)
• Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, 1994-1998
• Mellon Dissertation Finishing Year Fellowship, 1997-1998 (declined)
• Dexter Traveling Fellowship, Summer 1997
• Distinguished Teaching Awards: Spring 1996, Fall 1996, Spring 1997
• Mellon Fellowship for Support of Summer Research, 1995
• Member of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, 1994-1996
• English Prize Fellowship, 1992-1994
• English Tutor at Quincy House, 1992-1998

University of Cambridge (King's College)

• Thouron Scholarship, 1991-1992 (academic/diplomatic scholarship designed to foster Anglo-American relations; fully funds one year of post-graduate study)

Links

• Podcast interviews about the book That the World May Know: Harvard University Press and Macalester Talks
• Radio Interview (National Public Radio) The Connection (in studio, live, one-hour)
• Radio Interview (National Public Radio) Radio Times (by telephone, live, one-hour)
• Radio Interview (National Public Radio) Morning Edition (pre-recorded arts feature with novelist Tim O'Brien, seven minutes)