{"id":6348,"date":"2018-08-28T14:56:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T18:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/?post_type=profile&p=6348"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:50:18","slug":"robert-chodat","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/profile\/robert-chodat\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Chodat"},"content":{"rendered":"

For CV\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n

My research focuses on post-WWII American fiction, the relation between literature and philosophy, and the intersection of these two areas. In particular I\u2019ve been interested in how the language of agency and purpose survives in a reductively naturalistic culture, and how different authors, texts, and genres talk about varying levels of meaningful behavior\u2014from particular utterances and acts to individual lives to collective projects and cultural practices.<\/p>\n

My published work includes The Matter of High Words: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Postwar Sage <\/em>(Oxford, 2017) and Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo<\/em> (Cornell, 2008), as well as articles on Richard Powers, Lorrie Moore, Philip Roth, Stanley Cavell, Wittgenstein, pragmatism, and evolutionary and cognitive theory.<\/p>\n

I have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2013-14); the BU Center for the Humanities (2009-10); the Humboldt Foundation (2006-7); and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2003-4). My teaching covers a wide range of twentieth-century literature, theory, and intellectual history, and includes \u201cPhilosophical Fictions,\u201d \u201cIrony and Postwar Literature,\u201d \u201cThe Sixties in Fiction and Theory,\u201d \u201cFictions of the Fifties,\u201d \u201cReading After Wittgenstein,\u201d and \u201cKnowing, Feeling, Judging (Kant and 20th Century Aesthetics).\u201d I have also taught surveys of post-WWII American fiction and the history of criticism and theory from Plato to Freud.<\/p>\n

Since 2018, I have also been the organizer of the BU Workshop on Literature, Philosophy, and Aesthetics, an annual meeting of literary scholars and philosophers: http:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/litphilworkshop\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/h5>\n
    \n
  • The Matter of High Words: Naturalism, Norms, and the Postwar Sage\u00a0<\/em>(Oxford, 2017)<\/li>\n
  • Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo\u00a0<\/em>(Cornell, 2008)<\/li>\n
  • Wittgenstein and Literary Studies,\u00a0<\/em>co-edited with John Gibson (Cambridge, 2022)<\/li>\n
  • \u00a0\u201cA Horrifyingly Deprived World? Stories, Novels, and Alasdair MacIntyre,\u201d\u00a0ELH\u00a0<\/em>(forthcoming)<\/li>\n
  • \u00a0\u201cTruth By Other Means?\u201d\u00a0Syndicate<\/em>\u00a0(2023)<\/li>\n
  • \u00a0\u201cAppreciating Materials: Literature, Science, and the Very Idea of Method,\u201d in Wittgenstein and Literary Studies \u00a0<\/em>(2022)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cExperts and Encounters,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>PMLA\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2020)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cDoing Art and Doing Other Things: On Michaels on Photography,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>nonsite\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2020)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cResponse to\u00a0<\/span>Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell<\/i>, by Toril Moi\u201d;\u00a0<\/span>nonsite\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2019)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cAgency,\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Bloomsbury, 2018)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cIs a Narrative a Something or a Nothing?\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Wittgenstein on Aesthetic Understanding<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2016)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cThat Horeb, That Kansas: Evolution and the Modernity of Marilynne Robinson.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>American\u00a0Literary History<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2016)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cThe Novel,\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Literature\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2016)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cIs Style Information?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Partial Answers<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2013)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cThe American Evasion of Pragmatism: Minds, Souls, and the Case of Walker Percy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>nonsite<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2011)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cEmpiricism, Exhaustion, and Meaning What We Say: Cavell and Contemporary Fiction,\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies: Consequences of Skepticism<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2011)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cPhilosophy and the American Novel,\u201d\u00a0in\u00a0<\/span>Cambridge History of the American Novel\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2011)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cEvolution and Explanation: Biology, Aesthetics, Pragmatism,\u201d\u00a0Contemporary Pragmatism\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2010)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cA Commitment to the Meaningful,\u201d\u00a0Twentieth-Century Literature\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2008)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cNaturalism and Narrative, or, What Computers and Human Beings Can\u2019t Do,\u201d\u00a0New Literary History\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2007)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cJokes, Fiction, and Lorrie Moore,\u201d\u00a0Twentieth-Century Literature<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2006)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cFictions Public and Private: On Philip Roth,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Contemporary Literature<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2005)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cSense, Science, and the Interpretations of Gertrude Stein,\u201d\u00a0Modernism\/Modernity<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2005)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    Honors, Grants, and Awards<\/h5>\n
      \n
    • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2013-14<\/li>\n
    • BU Humanities Foundation Fellowship (2008\u2013<\/em>9)<\/li>\n
    • Humboldt Research Fellowship (2006\u2013<\/em>7)<\/li>\n
    • Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003\u2013<\/em>4)<\/li>\n
    • Mabel McLeod Lewis Fellowship (2002\u2013<\/em>3)<\/li>\n
    • Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Stipendium (1999)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":12176,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10073,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6348\/revisions\/10073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}