{"id":9444,"date":"2024-07-01T16:15:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T20:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/?post_type=profile&p=9444"},"modified":"2026-03-02T10:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:07:22","slug":"rafael-hernandez","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/profile\/rafael-hernandez\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Hern\u00e1ndez"},"content":{"rendered":"

For full CV click here<\/a><\/p>\n

My research and teaching examine 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century literature\u2014especially British and Irish modernism. I\u2019m interested in modernism\u2019s deeply embodied form, and my research often asks how modernist writers envisioned the body in relationship to experiences of disease, disability, gender, and race. My current book project studies the influence of medical discourses on the modernist K\u00fcnstlerroman<\/em>, or artist novel. The artist novel, I argue, responds to the increased pathologizing of modernist form and style by recrafting and amplifying longstanding narratives about health and artistic virtuosity. The book studies artist novels by writers like Oscar Wilde, W. Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, Radclyffe Hall, and Virginia Woolf. I\u2019m also at work on a second project which studies British narratives of disease and disability set in South America. This project frames narratives of decline within the legacy of England\u2019s unsuccessful conquest of the area.<\/p>\n

Alongside my research, I teach courses in British and Irish modernism, 19th and 20th<\/sup> century Anglophone literature, and special topics courses on disability studies, detective and espionage fiction, and the works of James Joyce. Over the years, I have taught at the University of Florida, Oklahoma State University, and now Boston University. I\u2019m an advocate of public humanities and extracurricular literary studies, and I\u2019ve joined and started public book clubs in Boston and hope to foster more literary community within and beyond the halls of BU. Some of my favorite writers are Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bowen, Joan Didion, James Joyce, Sally Rooney, Zadie Smith, Virginia Woolf, and Richard Wright\u2014and I\u2019ve recently started working through Proust. My current extracurricular goal is to read more global 19th<\/sup> century social novels, especially Flaubert and Dostoevsky.<\/p>\n

Teaching and Research Interests<\/strong><\/p>\n

British and Irish Modernism<\/p>\n

The 19th<\/sup>– and 20th<\/sup>-century novel<\/p>\n

Disability studies\/medical humanities<\/p>\n

Masculinity<\/p>\n

Art and visual culture<\/p>\n

British informal empire in South America<\/p>\n

Virginia Woolf<\/p>\n

James Joyce<\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cReading Literary Maps: The Call to National Defense in The Riddle of the Sands<\/em>,\u201d Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture<\/em>, Duke University Press (forthcoming)<\/p>\n

\u201cDisease, Disability, and Narrative Collapse in The Moon and Sixpence<\/em>,\u201d Disability and Disease in the Novel, ed. Lydia Cooper and Matthew Reznicek, Studies in the Novel<\/em>, Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Aesthetic Turn in Disability and Degeneration,\u201d Disability on the Cusp: Transitions, Transformations, Intersections, Cusp: Late 19th-\/Early 20th-Century Cultures<\/em> (2024)<\/p>\n

\u201cJoyce, Bloom, and Max Nordau.\u201d Review of Unfit: Jewish Degeneration and Modernism<\/em>, Marilyn Reizbaum, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. James Joyce Literary Supplement<\/em> (2024)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Dark men in mien and movement\u2019: Blindness and the Body in Ulysses<\/em>,\u201d Joyce Writing Disability<\/em>. Ed. Jeremy Colangelo, Gainesville: University of Florida Press (2022)<\/p>\n

\u201cPhysical Culture and the Aesthetics of Jewish Regeneration in Ulysses<\/em>,\u201d James Joyce Quarterly<\/em>, Volume 58.3, Spring, University of Tulsa (2021)<\/p>\n

\u201cA Modernist Teaches Analysis,\u201d Who Teaches Writing<\/em>, ed. Joshua Daniel, Open Educational Resources, Oklahoma State University Libraries (2021)<\/p>\n

\u201cProtein Powders and Pastes: Muscle Foods for the Twentieth Century Man,\u201d The Modernist Review<\/em> (2020)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4119,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9444"}],"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\/4119"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10134,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9444\/revisions\/10134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}