Maxwell Sater
maxwell.sater@gmail.com
Education
Ph.D., Literatures in English, Rutgers University, October 2020
Dissertation: “From Novel to Criticism: Narrative Knowing in the Nineteenth Century”
Committee: David Kurnick (chair), John Kucich, Carolyn Williams, Nicholas Dames (Columbia University)
M.A., Literatures in English, Rutgers University, 2017
B.A., English Literature, University of Maryland, 2013
Publications
“Hardy’s Trees: Ecological Acknowledgement in The Woodlanders,” invited to revise and resubmit to Nineteenth-Century Literature
“Why Write? Toward a Style for Climate Change,” forthcoming in Public Books
“The Novel’s Promise: George Eliot’s Skepticism,” Studies in the Novel 52.3 (Fall 2020), 269-87
Fellowships and Awards
Raritan Dissertation Fellowship, 2019-2020
Rutgers English Fifth Year Fellowship, 2018-2019
Pre-Dissertation Award, 2017. Grant to conduct research at Huntington Library
Honorable mention, Rutgers English Catherine Moynahan Award for best essay on a literary topic: “On Truth in Fiction: Middlemarch and Empiricism,” 2017
Summer Mellon Grant, 2015
Honorable mention, Rutgers English Marius Bewley Award for best essay written during graduate coursework: “A Critique of Detachment: Moral Epistemology and the Problem of Realism in Oliver Twist,” 2015
Rutgers English First Year Fellowship, 2014-2015
Conference Presentations
“Toward a Theory of Narrative as Acknowledgement,” North American Victorian Studies Association, upcoming 2021
“The Skeptical Grotesque: Cavell, Montaigne, and Literary Criticism,” American Comparative Literature Association, 2020. Seminar organizer and presenter. Conference canceled due to COVID-19
“Hardy’s Trees: Scalar Difference in The Woodlanders,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, 2020
“Natural History, Human History, and the Novel in Thomas Hardy,” North American Victorian Studies Association, 2019
“George Eliot’s Skeptical Humanism,” Northeast Modern Language Association, 2019
“Tess’s Histories,” Princeton-Rutgers Victorian Symposium, 2019
“Vision, Empiricism, and Skepticism in the Works of George Eliot,” North American Victorian Studies Association, 2018
“The Self Divided: Sympathetic Judgment in Hume and Smith,” Rutgers Long Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Studies Group Conference, 2016
“Ruskin’s Art-Critical Ethos,” Princeton-Rutgers Victorian Symposium, 2016
“Evolutionary Psychology and Sociology in Our Mutual Friend,” Princeton-Rutgers Victorian Symposium, 2015
Teaching and Research Areas
Victorian Literature and Culture, Literary Criticism, The History of Science, Ecocriticism, Theory and History of the Novel, Narrative Theory, Ordinary Language Philosophy, Composition
Teaching
“Expository Writing,” Fall 2017, two sections
“Introduction to the Principles of Literary Analysis: Prose Fiction,” Spring 2017
“Introduction to the Principles of Literary Analysis: Prose Fiction,” mentored teaching assistant to David Kurnick, Fall 2016
“Expository Writing,” Spring 2016
“Expository Writing,” Fall 2015
Academic Service
Co-organizer, Nineteenth-Century Studies Group, Rutgers English Department, 2017-18
Co-President, Natura: The Science and Epistemology Working Group, Rutgers University, 2015-2016