Dr. Alison Shonkwiler

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Alison Shonkwiler
Department, Office, or School
Department of English
RIC AFT
  • Professor

My areas of interest include literatures of capitalism, globalization, and work. I teach courses in literary theory, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, postmodernism (or post-postmodernism—whatever that is). In all my courses I ask fundamental questions about why we read, what counts as literature, and what relevance literature has to our thinking about the world.

My current research is on homesteading, survivalism, and the collapse of work. An article I wrote about neo-homesteading and the rise of “home work” was published in Public Culture in 2020. I am the author of a book, The Financial Imaginary: Realism in an Era of Economic Mystification (2017), about representations of abstract capitalism in the contemporary American realist novel. I have also co-edited a book, Reading Capitalist Realism (2014), that brings together the work of several scholars on the dimensions and limits of narrative in the age of neoliberal austerity. 

I began teaching at RIC in 2011, having previously taught at Rutgers University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania. When not in Craig-Lee I am reading, doing the NYT crossword, scouring thrift stores, and seeking deeply absorbing TV characters. 

Education

  • B.A., Amherst College
  • M.A., Rutgers University, New Brunswick
  • Ph.D., Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Selected Publications

Books

  • The Financial Imaginary: Economic Mystification and the Limits of Realism. University of Minnesota Press, 2017
  • Reading Capitalist Realism. University of Iowa Press, 2014.

Articles

  • “Financial Metafiction.” Essay on Trust by Hernan Diaz. PMLA 138.5 (2023)
  • “Neo-Homesteading: Domestic Production and the Contradictions of Post-Wage Labor.” Public Culture, 2020
  • “Realisms.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (Fall 2019). http://literature.oxfordre.com/
  • "Survivalism and Other Class Fantasies.” American Literary History 31.4 (Winter 2019)
  • “Real Estate Confessions: Moral Realism in a Risk Economy.” Chapter in Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, ed. Michelle Chihara and Matthew Seybold. Routledge, 2018
  • “DeLillo’s Financial Sublime,” Contemporary Literature 51.2 (Summer 2010). Awarded L.S. Dembo Prize for best essay published in Contemporary Literature in 2010.
  • “Towards a Long View of Capitalism: Dehistoricized Finance in The Financier.” Studies in the Novel 41.1 (Spring 2009)
  • “The Selfish-Enough Father: Gay Adoption and the Late Capitalist Family.” GLQ 14.4 (Fall 2008)

Courses

  • FYS 100 American Survivalism
  • FYW 100 Introduction to Academic Writing
  • ENGL 120 Studies in Literature
  • ENGL 209 American Literature
  • ENGL 230 Writing for Professional Settings
  • ENGL 250 Copyediting
  • ENGL 267 Books That Changed American Culture (Connections)
  • ENGL 300 Literary Theory
  • ENGL 302 American Literature, 1860-1914
  • ENGL 307 Studies in Modernist Literature
  • ENGL 308 Studies in Contemporary Literature
  • ENGL 343 Recent Fiction
  • ENGL 460 Senior Seminar: Money and Work in the American Century
  • ENGL 501 Introduction to Graduate Study
  • ENGL 541 Topics in American Literature since 1900
  • HONR 351 Junior Honors Colloquium