William Warner

Candidate statement

William Warner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC/ Santa Barbara. His latest book is Protocols of Liberty: Communication Innovation and the American Revolution (Chicago), which won the Gottschalk Prize in 2013. His monographs include: Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain (1684-1750) (U of California), Chance and the Text of Experience: Freud, Nietzsche, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Cornell); and Reading Clarissa: The Struggles of Interpretation (Yale). He is the co- editor of two collections: This is Enlightenment (ed. with Clifford Siskin, Chicago), and Cultural Institutions of the Novel (ed. with Deirdre Lynch, Duke). He has published over 40 essays and book chapters and he has held fellowships from the ACLS and the Clark Library. He has served as Chair of English at UC/ Santa Barbara as well as on the ASECS Executive Board from 2013-2016 and the Gottschalk Prize Committee in 2014-2015. He is currently writing upon how the early novel’s claim upon reality changes our understanding of later forms of ‘realism’ in literature, art, history and philosophy.

ASECS’s great strengths emerge from its coherent historical focus and its interdisciplinary scope. In an epoch when the disciplines of the humanities face downsizing, our challenge is to sustain the advancement of knowledge in the ways consistent with ASECS. We can be innovative and relevant in a fashion consistent with the dynamic intellectual legacy of the historical epoch we study.