Kate Stanley
Associate Professor
Graduate Development & Placement Coordinator
PhD, Columbia University, 2013
MA, University of British Columbia, 2004
BA Hons, Queen's University, 2002
University College 3430
519-661-2111 ext. 87857
kate.stanley@uwo.ca
Research
My teaching and research focus on American literature from the nineteenth century to the present and the relationship between literature and philosophy (especially pragmatism). I’m particularly interested in the role of aesthetic experience in humanities education in the context of climate change. My first book, Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson (Cambridge 2018), explores how major modernist writers and pragmatist philosophers use the experience of surprise as an aesthetic tool, aiming to harness the unexpected in their writing and transmit it to readers. I recently co-edited (with Kristen Case) William James and Literary Studies for the book series Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy, as well as a special section of PMLA (with Nicholas Gaskill) on “Aesthetic Education.” My essays on modernism, aesthetics, pragmatist critical methods, theories of emotion, and learning in the humanities have appeared in PMLA, ALH, Modernism/modernity, Criticism, Henry James Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism. I am currently at work on a SSHRC-supported project about using pragmatist pedagogical methods to navigate the climate crisis in humanities classrooms.
Select Publications
Books
Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson (Cambridge UP 2018).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108551236
William James and Literary Studies. (forthcoming Cambridge UP 2025, co-edited with Kristen Case).
Journal Special Issue
“Aesthetic Education: A Twenty-first Century Primer,” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 138, no. 1, 2023, “Theories and Methodologies” section, pp. 127-22 (co-edited with Nicholas Gaskill).
Essays
“Weirding Thoreau,” Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau, eds. Kristen Case and James Finley (forthcoming Oxford UP 2025).
“Introduction: How to Do Things with William James,” William James and Literary Studies (forthcoming Cambridge UP 2025, co-written with Kristen Case).
“Jamesian Pedagogy,” William James and Literary Studies (forthcoming Cambridge UP 2025, co-written with Kristen Case).
“Aesthetic Education without Guarantees: An Introduction,” PMLA, vol. 138, no. 1, 2023, pp. 127-36. (co-written with Nicholas Gaskill). https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812923000044
“The Pedagogical Potential of the Eco-Epic.” Modernism/modernity+, 13 May 2021.
“Postsecular Style.” American Literary History, vol. 33, no. 1, 2021, pp. 191-205. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajaa044
Responses to Syndicate Symposium on Practices of Surprise, 20 Jan. 2021.
“Unrarified Air: Alfred Stieglitz and the Modernism of Equivalence.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 26, no. 1, 2019, pp. 185-212. https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2019.0008.
“Affect and Emotion: James, Dewey, Tomkins, Damasio, Massumi, Spinoza.” The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism, edited by Donald R. Wehrs and Thomas Blake, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 97-112. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63303-9_2
“Getting Acquainted with Wallace Stevens.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 17 Apr. 2019.
“Tough and Tender.” Modernism/modernity+, Response to the Special Issue on Weak Theory, Part 1, Jan. 2019.
“Pragmatism and Pedagogy: The Disciplinary Legacy of Hum 6.” Modernism/modernity+, 4 Jan. 2018.
“James, William (1842-1910).” Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 5 Feb. 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781135000356-REM1350-1
“Through Emerson’s Eye: The Practice of Perception in Proust.” American Literary History, vol. 28, no. 3, 2016, pp. 455-83. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajw029
“Habits of Modernism.” Criticism, vol. 56, no. 4, 2014, pp. 853-60. https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.56.4.0853
“Henry James’s Syntax of Surprise.” Henry James Review, vol. 34, no. 1, 2013, pp. 16-32. https://doi.org/10.1353/hjr.2013.0007
“Fault Lines.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1-2, 2008, pp. 181-87. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.0.0046
Select Awards
2025-26 Graham and Gale Wright Distinguished Scholar
SSHRC Insight Grant (2025-30) for “Pragmatist Practices of Aesthetic Education in the Context of Climate Change”
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2018-21) for “Varieties of American Pedagogy”
Finalist for 2018 Modernist Studies Association (MSA) First Book Prize
