True Crime in Nineteenth-Century Literature (ed.). Columbia, S.C.: Layman Poupard, 2010.
Fact, Fiction and Form: Essays of Ralph Rader (ed., with James Phelan). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2011.
The Robe of Samuel: Difficulty and Indeterminacy in Biblical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, in progress.
Cases of Identity. In progress.
ARTICLES:
"The Three Denouements of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird." Contemporary Literature, 15:3 (Summer 1974), 370-85.
"Pandora's Box Revisited: Genre Theory 1960-75." Critical Inquiry, 1:2 (December 1974), 453-78.
"Two Bibliographical Questions in Kosinski"s The Painted Bird." Contemporary Literature, 16:1 (Winter 1975), 126-29.
"The Reader as Ironic Victim." Novel, 14:2 (Winter 1981), 135-51.
"From Babel to Pentecost." Language and Style, 14:3 (Summer 1981), 232-45.
"The Second Flight of the Phoenix: Neo-Aristotelianism Since R.S. Crane." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 23:1 (Winter 1982), 27-48.
"Closure and the Critics." Modern Philology, 80:3 (February 1983), 287-93.
"The Gothic Impulse." Dickens Studies Annual, 11 (1984): 279-311.
"Narrative Entrapment in Pnin and 'Signs and Symbols.'" Papers on Language and Literature, 20:4 (Fall, 1984): 418-30.
"Covert Plot in Isak Dinesen's Sorrow-Acre." Journal of Narrative Technique, 15:1 (Winter 1985): 82-90. Reprinted in Isak Dinesen: Critical Views, ed Olga Anastasia Pelensky (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993): 295-304. Reprinted in Short Stories for Students, vol 3, ed. Kathleen Wilson (Detroit: Gale, 1998): 336-40.
"Two Studies in Iconic Syntax: Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Tears, Idle Tears' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Dance.'" Language and Style, 18:2 (Spring 1985): 136-51.
"Eco's Echoes: Semiotic Theory and Detective Practice in The Name of the Rose." Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 10: 2 (Spring 1986): 213-36.
"Bakhtin in Life and Art." Style, 20:3 (Fall, 1986): 411-420.
"Gothic Fantasia: The Monsters and the Myths," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 28:2 (1987): 149-170.
"Ronald Salmon Crane." Modern American Critics 1920-1955, ed. Gregory S. Jay, Dictionary of Literary Biography (ed. Matthew Bruccoli). Columbia, S.C.: Gale Publications, 1987: 87-98.
"The Reception of the Gothic Novel in the 1790s," pp. 117-137 in Robert Uphaus, ed., The Idea of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1988).
"The Unguarded Prison: Reception Theory, Structural Marxism and the History of the Gothic Novel," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 30: 3 (Autumn 1989): 1-17.
"Murder in Jest: Serial Homicide in the Post-Modern Detective Story," Journal of Narrative Technique 8: 1 (1989): 117-132.
"Dialogism and Poetry." Studies in the Literary Imagination (Spring 1990): 3-27.
"Paul De Man"; "Terry Eagleton"; "Julia Kristeva." World Authors: 1980-1985, ed. Vineta Colby. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1991, pp. 204-8; 241-6; 496-500.
"Gothic's Gothic." Modern Language Review 85, iii (July, 1990): 698-701.
"Gothic Fiction / Gothic Form." Modern Language Review 86, i (January, 1991): 174-177.
"The American Short Story since 1945," Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. George Perkins et al. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991): 973-75.
"From Medievalism to Historicism: Representations of History in the Gothic Novel and Historical Romance," Studies in Medievalism 4 (1992): 79-104.
"Multiculturalism, Academic Radicalism, and the University Presses," Scholarly Publishing 24 (1993): 133-145.
"Croce." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism and Theory, ed Michael Grodin and Michael Kreiswirth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993): 174-176.
"Background Action and Ideology: Grey Men and Dope Doctors in Raymond Chandler." Narrative 2, i (January 1994): 29-40. Reprinted in Robert Merrill, ed., Twentieth-Century Views of Raymond Chandler (Twayne, 1999).
"The Female Gothic." Modern Language Review 89:1 (January 1994): 200-203.
"Wayne C. Booth and the Pragmatics of Literary Reviewing". Pp. 104-116 in Fred Antczak, ed., Rhetoric and Pluralism: Legacies of Wayne Booth, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1995.
"Fredric Jameson"; "Wolfgang Iser"; and "Stanley Fish"; in Vineta Colby, ed., World Authors 1985-90. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1996.
"Henry Fielding and the Closing of Masterpiece Theatre" and "Ideology and Form Revisited" in "Ideology and Form in Eighteenth-Century Criticism," special issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 37.3 (Fall 1996): 195-205, 285-286.
"Midrash and Mashal: Difficulty in the Blessing of Esau." Narrative 5 (October 1996): 253-264.
"A Name by Any Other Rose: Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Detection." Pp. 227-247 in Reading Eco, ed. Rocco Paluzzi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism (Gale Cengage: 2008).
"Mindmeld: Sheldon Sacks as a Teacher and Dissertation Director." Hypotheses 21 (Spring 1997): 3-7.
"Farewell My Concubine: The Difficult, the Stubborn, and the Outrage of Gibeah." Pp. 101-122 in Agendas for Midrash Study in the 21st Century, ed. Marc Lee Raphael (Williamsburg, VA: William and Mary Press, 1999).
"Narrativity and Stasis in Martin Rowson's Tristram Shandy," in The Shandean 11 (1999-2000): 70-91.
"Monument or Tombstone," review article in Narrative 9, iii (October 2001) 346-351.
“Pluralism at the Millennium,” Hypotheses: Neo-Aristotelian Analysis 35/36 (Fall 2000-Winter 2001): 12-14.
“Hyping the Norton,” Symploké 11.1-2 (2003): 243-246.
“Your Cheatin’ Art: Double Dealing in Cinematic Narrative.” Narrative 13:1 (January 2005): 11-28.
“Genre, Repetition, Temporal Ordering: Some Aspects of Biblical Narratology,” Pp. 285-98 in The Blackwell Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz (New York and London: Blackwell, 2005). Reprinted, translated into Mandarin, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2008.
“Keeping Company in Hollywood: Toward an Ethics of the Non-fiction Film,” in Narrative, 15:2 (May 2007): 140-66.
“Robert Alter and The Resistance to Theory” (part of “Academic Roundtable on Robert Alter,” Expositions, 2:2 (2008): 213-222.
“The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Ralph W. Rader,” with James Phelan. Narrative 18:1 (January 2010), 73-90.
“The Chicago School.” The Wylie-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Gregory Castle et al. New York and London: Blackwell, 2010, pp. 108-118.
“The Novel,” in The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, et al (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010), pp. 641-643.
“The Gothic Novel,” in The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, ed. J. A. J. Downie (New York and London: Oxford UP, 2014).
BOOK REVIEWS:
Alice Van Buren Kelley, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision. Modern Philology, 73:3 (February 1976), 122-25.
Laurence L. Langer, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. Contemporary Literature, 18:4 (Autumn 1977), 552-56.
Robert Alter, Partial Magic: The Novel as Self-Conscious Genre. The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography 1975, new series, 1 (1978), 202-3.
Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James. Language and Style, 12:2 (Spring 1979), 125-27.
Walter A. Davis, The Act of Interpretation. Style, 15:1 (Winter 1981), 98-101.
Günter Grass, Headbirths; or, The Germans Are Dying Out and Heinrich Böll, The Safety Net. Commonweal, 109:13 (July 16, 1982), 409-10.
Alfred Döblin, November 1918: A German Revolution. Volume I: A People Betrayed. Volume II: Karl and Rosa. Commonweal, May, 1984.
Austin Wright, The Formal Principle in the Novel. Style, 19:1 (Winter 1985), 137-141.
Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Comparative Literature, 42:1 (Winter 1990): 73-76.
Manuel Aguirre, The Closed Space: Horror Literature and Western Symbolism. Modern Language Review 87:3 (1992): 710-11.
Ina Ferris, The Achievement of Literary Authority: Walter Scott and the Gendering of the English Novel. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 5:1 (October 1992): 82-84.
Jacqueline Howard, Reading Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach. Modern Language Review 91:2 (1996): 459-60.
Ian Duncan, Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens, Modern Language Review, 1995.
Robert Miles, Gothic Writing 1750-1820: A Genealogy. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 6:4 (1995) 398-400.
Harold Orel, The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini. Year's Work in English Studies 27 (1996): 264-5.
Adam Zachary Newton, Narrative Ethics. Modern Fiction Studies, 1996.
Maggie Kilgour, The Rise of the Gothic Novel; and Nancy H. Traill, Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal. University of Toronto Quarterly,67.1 (1998): 225-228.
Anne Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Modern Language Review 93.1 (1998): 191-193.
George Whalley, Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation with Commentary. University of Toronto Quarterly, 68.1 (Winter 1999): 414-416.
James Cruise, Governing Consumption. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 13.1 (2000): 84-87.
Ina Ferris, The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland. Letters in Canada 73 (2003): 210-13.
Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Reception and Canon-Formation. Studies in Romanticism 42.4 (2004): 587-93.
Jeffery Donaldson and Alan Mendelson, eds, Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Writings of Northrop Frye. Letters in Canada 75.1 (Winter 2005-6): 386-387.
Northrop Frye: The Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory 1933–1963. University of Toronto Quarterly 77.1 (Winter 2008): 370-372.
Rebecca Stern, Home Economics: Domestic Fraud in Victorian England. Journal of Victorian Culture 15:2 (2010): 303-307.
ORAL PAPERS AND ACTIVITIES 1990-2011:
Exchange Professor, Departement d'études des pays anglophones, Université de Paris VIII à Saint-Denis, 1989-1990.
Lecture Series: The Book and the Reader, Université de Paris VIII--Saint Denis, May-June 1990. (1) The Eclipse of the Reader; (2) The Reader in the Sunshine; (3) Reception Theory and the School of Konstanz; (4) The Reader of the Gothic Novel 1790-1900; (5) Reception Theory and Ideology.
Oral Paper, "The Haunted Castle in Art and Literature," CUE Seminar, Queens College, March 1991.
Oral Paper, "Rorty in the Jungle," Seminar on "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" with Richard Rorty, Queens College, April 1991.
Oral Paper, "Bakhtin and the Dialogics of Poetry," Conference on Narrative Poetics, Université de Nice, June 1991.
Oral Paper, "The Progress of Romance," CUNY Graduate Center, September 1991.
Oral Paper, "The Closing of Masterpiece Theatre: Henry Fielding and the Valorization of Incoherence," MLA Convention, San Francisco, December 1991.
Oral Paper, "Kulturkampf at the University," American Association of University Presses, October 1992.
Oral Paper, "Grey Men and Dope Doctors: Heterological Diegesis and Ideology in Raymond Chandler," Conference on Narrative Poetics, Albany New York, April 1993.
Oral Paper, "The Progress of Romance," International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Vancouver, British Columbia, April 1994.
Oral Paper, "Babel, Pentecost, and the Politics of Difference," Modern Language Association Convention, San Diego, December 1994.
Oral Paper, "The Aesthetics and Ideology of Murder in Aldous Huxley's 'The Gioconda Smile,'" International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Park City, Utah, April 1995.
Oral Paper, "Critical Pidgins and Cultural Practices; or, Brother, Can You Paradigm?" Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, December 1995.
Oral Paper: "Jonathan Wild and the Poetics of True Crime Fiction." South Central Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, New Orleans, February 1996. Repeated for the CUNY Eighteenth-Century Group, March 1996.
Oral Paper, "Midrash and Mashal: Difficulty in Biblical Narrative" International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Columbus Ohio, April 1996.
Oral Paper: "Reading Jonathan Wild." International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Gainesville, Florida, April 1997.
Respondent, Session on Tristram Shandy. International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, April 1998.
Respondent, Session on History and Fiction. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, April 1998.
Consultation, "Agendas for Midrash in the Twenty-First Century." William and Mary University, Williamsburg, VA, May 1998.
Oral Paper: "Generic Incoherence in the Narrative of The Concubine of Gibeah." Genre at the Millenium: An International Conference. Colgate University and Hamilton College, Hamilton and Clinton, NY, September 1998.
Oral Paper: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Form." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Milwaukee WI, March 1999.
Oral Paper: "Narrativity and Stasis in Martin Rowson's Tristram Shandy. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Montréal, October 1999.
Chair, Session on "Narrative Theory of Lyric Sequences" sponsored by the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature at the Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, December 1999.
Oral Paper: "Difficulty and Indeterminacy in the Narrative of the Concubine of Gibeah." International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Emory University, Atlanta GA, April 2000.
Oral Paper: “Scribbling Colonists and Speaking Subalterns: Narrative Voice in Castle Rackrent,” Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Toronto, October 2000.
Oral Paper: “Pluralism at the Millennium,” Modern Language Association Convention, Washington DC, December 2000.
Oral Paper: “Late Reconfiguration, or Who Is Keyser Soze and Who Cares?” International Conference on Narrative Poetics, Rice University, Houston TX, March 2001.
Oral Paper: “Cases of Identity: La femme sans nom, The Woman in White and the Tichborne Claimant.” International Conference on Literature and Law, Nice France, June 2001.
Oral Paper: “Cases of Identity.” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, East Lansing MI, April 2002.
Conference Organizer, Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, New York, October 2002.
Oral Paper: “Narrative Authority in 1 Samuel,” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Berkeley CA, March 2003.
Oral Paper: “Biblical Narratology,” Blackwell Conference on Contemporary Narrative Theory, Columbus OH, October 2003.
Oral Paper: “Erich Auerbach: Biblical Narratologist” Conference Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, New York, November 2003.
Oral Paper: “Your Cheatin’ Art: Goofs, Cheap Thrills and Cheats in Contemporary Narrative Film,” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Burlington VT, April 2004.
Oral Paper: “Play It Again, Rashi.” Program in Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center, December 2004.
Oral Paper: “Jewish Biblical Interpretation in the Age of Enlightenment, or, Play It Again, Rashi.” American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Las Vegas NV, April 2005.
Oral Paper: “The Higher Criticism, the Haskalah, and the Rhetoric of Religion,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Salisbury MD, March 2006.
Oral Paper: “ ‘Denmark’s a prison’ ‘Then is the world one’: Imprisonment and Surveillance in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams,” American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Montreal QC, March-April, 2006.
Oral Paper: “Keeping Company in Hollywood: The Ethics of the Non-Fiction Film,” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Ottawa ON, April 2006.
Oral Paper: “Postmodern Pastiche: Jane Austen in Manhattan and A Cock and Bull Story,” American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Atlanta GA, March, 2007.
Oral Paper: “Deconstructing Job: The Lower Criticism and the Revenge of Theo-ontology” International Society for the Study of Narrative, Austin, TX, May 2008.
Oral Paper: “The Global Rise of the Novel: Difference and Convergence,” Modern Language Association, San Francisco CA, December 2008.
Oral Paper: “Visual Allegoresis and Social Tensions in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Richmond VA, March 2009.
Oral Paper: “Difficulty and Recalcitrance in Biblical Narrative: Judges 19-21 and Job 42,” Chongqing, China, October 2009.
Oral Paper: “The Future of Theory.” Shanghai International Studies University and Peking University, Shanghai and Beijing, China, October 2009.
Oral Paper: “Adapting Austen.” Peking University, Beijing China, October 2009.
Oral Paper: “Adapting Austen: Theoretical Considerations.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Albuquerque NM, March 2010.
Oral Paper: “Date Rape in Ancient Israel: Narrative and Discourse in Genesis 34 and 2 Samuel 13.” International Society for the Study of Narrative, Cleveland OH, April 2010.
Oral Paper: "Writing Lives and Telling Stories: Narrative Ethics in the Jane Austen Biopics." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vancouver, BC, March 2011.
Oral Paper: "Watching Paint Dry: Narrativity and Stasis in the Literary Adaptations of Eric Rohmer." International Society for the Study of Narrative, St. Louis MO, April 2011.
Guest Editor, special issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation on "Form and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Literature" Volume 37, no. 3 (Fall 1996).
Reader for (among others) University of Chicago Press, Ohio State University Press, Rutgers University Press, University Press of Alabama, University of California Press, University of Minnesota Press, Harvard University Press; Southern Illinois University Press, University Press of Virginia, Random House, St. Martin's Press; Style, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Literature and Medicine, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Mosaic, Dickens Studies Annual, Language and Style, PMLA.
Consultant to the Educational Testing Service, 1990--.
Advisory Board, Narrative, 1992-1998
COURSES TAUGHT (Last Five Years)
Doctoral: “Culture Wars of the 1790s: The Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin Novel,” “Swift, Fielding, Sterne: Satire and Comedy,” "Literature and Culture of the Enlightenment"; "Biblical Narrative"; "Discourses of Enlightenment"; "The Gothic: Genre and Mode"; "Theory Colloquium"; "The Rise of the Novel," “Introduction to Graduate Study: Research Methods, Textuality, Theory, History and Future of the Profession.”
M.A.: "Literary Criticism"; "Graduate Methodology"; "Fiction in Theory and Practice"; "The Bible as Literature"; "Seminar: Jane Austen."
Undergraduate: “Suffering the World: Ancient and Modern Approaches through Religion and Philosophy”; “Jane Austen and Henry James in Hollywood”; "The English Novel I"; "Literature from Pope to Blake"; "Aspects of Literary Criticism"; "Biblical Narrative" (Honors Seminar); "Introduction to Literary Study"; "Introduction to Poetry"; Composition II.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. with Honors in English Language and Literature, The University of Chicago, June 1971. Dissertation: The Sense of Completeness in Didactic Fiction. Advisors: Sheldon Sacks and Wayne C. Booth.
M.A. in English Language and Literature, The University of Chicago, August 1966.
Thesis: "The Unreliable Editor in Cabell, Hesse, Svevo, and Nabokov"
B.A. with Honors in English Language and Literature, The University of Chicago, June 1965.
GRANTS AND AWARDS
1985-96 PSC-CUNY travel grants totaling $19500 to work at the British Library on the aesthetics of reception in the Gothic Novel around the year 1795 and on true crime fiction.
1986-7 NEH Fellowship Grant to write The Progress of Romance: The Gothic Novel and Literary Historiography.
PERSONAL
Date of Birth: 1 October 1945.
Married 1983 to Golde Hyman; two children, Gabriel and Sarah.
Home Address: Apt. 4F, 201 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024.
Home Telephone: 212-580-3336; Fax 212-580-5824
Office: Department of English, Queens College, Flushing NY 11367
Office Telephone: 718-997-4667; Fax -4693;
E-mail david.richter@qc.cuny.edu
ADMINISTRATIVE
Current Administrative Positions:
Chair, QC Committee on Graduate Scholastic Standards 1995--.
Graduate Center Departmental Committees: Admissions, Friday Forums. Convener, Committee on the Eighteenth-Century.
Past Experience:
Director of Graduate Studies in English, Queens College, 1985--2004. Responsible for programming, recruitment, advising, curriculum development, and general administration for the English department's graduate programs.
Member, English Department P&B [Executive] Committee (1992-99)
Chair, English Department Curriculum Committee 1993-98. Member, 1992-2006.
Member, University Faculty Senate (1994 to 1997).
Assistant Chairman for Administration 1975-80. Responsible for scheduling a department of (then) 70 full-time and 60 part-time instructors, departmental statistics, liaison with deans of arts and general studies and vice-president for institutional research, informal work for chairman on budget and curriculum.
Member, QC Committee on Finance and Budget, Middle States Accreditation Evaluation, 1985.
Chairman, QC Committee on Graduate Planning. 1987. College-wide committee advising the president on the future of the graduate programs.
Convener, Literary Theory Discussion Group, 1982--1994. Faculty development.
Community Service: Treasurer, PTA of P.S. 9 Manhattan 1995-1997; Webmaster, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.