Alexander Bove, PhD

Professor Bove received his Ph.D. from Boston University and specializes in Victorian literature and culture, British Romanticism, and critical theory. He has published on a wide array of topics ranging from Charles Dickens to contemporary film, from gender and sexuality studies to ecocriticism and climate-change-era theory, and from psychoanalysis to Object Oriented Ontology; his work can be found in various academic journals, including English Literary History, Mediations Journal, and Literature Film Quarterly. His has recently published a book on Charles Dickens, 19th C. visual culture, and characterization with Manchester University Press.
 
Professor Bove teaches a broad variety of courses and topics ranging from nineteenth-century British literature all the way to contemporary film. Some examples of his period literature courses include: The Romantic Period, The Victorian Era, and several single-author courses (called Major Writers) on Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and others. He also teaches Studies in Criticism and Theory and enjoys teaching special topics courses in film and literature, including Postmodernism in Film and Lit, Crime and Mystery in Film and Lit, and Mystery Sci-fi in Film and Lit.


Teaching:

HUM 100 FYS
ENGW 180 Writing & Research
ENGL 255/355 Oscar Wilde’s World   
ENGL 421 The Romantic Period
ENGL 422 The Victorian Era
ENGL 343 Studies in Criticism and Theory
ENGL 255/355 Postmodernism in Film and Lit
ENGL 430 Major Authors: Charles Dickens
ENGL 430 Major Authors: 19th C British Novel
ENGL 255/355 Crime and Mystery Film/Lit
ENGL 232 British Literature

Selected Publications:

Books:

Spectral Dickens: The uncanny forms of novelistic characterization. Manchester University Press, 2021.

Book Chapters:

“What Happens When the Replicants Become Extimate? On the Uncanny Cut of the Capitalocene in Blade Runner 2049.” Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049 (The Palgrave Lacan Series), edited by Calum Neill. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Journal Articles:

“Gender (de)Constructions and ‘Disjunctive Montage’: Narrative Telos and Filmic Play from Dickens’ David Copperfield to Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto.” LFQ: Literature/ Film Quarterly vol.46, no. 1 (Winter 2018).

“‘Why does the other want to destroy me?’: The Face of the Other, the Death Drive, and Surplus Jouissance in the Time of Late Capitalism.” Mediations 29.1 (Fall 2015) 101-121.“‘The Unbearable Realism of a Dream’: On the Subject of Portraits in Austen and Dickens.” ELH: English Literary History 74.3 (Fall 2007).

“‘The Unbearable Realism of a Dream’: On the Subject of Portraits in Austen and Dickens.” ELH: English Literary History 74.3 (Fall 2007).

Upcoming Conference Presentations:

“Capitalism, Quarantine, and the Novel Form.” Panel Chair. Modern Language Association (MLA). San Francisco, CA, January 5-8 2023.

Das Ding between Hilarity and Horror: Specters of Extimate Collectivity in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You and Nia DaCosta’s Candyman. LACK iv: Psychoanalytic Theory in 2023. The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, April 20-22, 2023.

Previous Conference Presentations:

“Challenging the Trend Towards Personhood in Character Theory through Genre and Form: Realism, Fantasy, and Other Mediations of The Real in Dickens’ Bleak House.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) and Ohio State University. Columbus, OH, Oct 17-19, 2019.

“On the Uncanny Ontology of Character and the Exclusionary Dispositif of the Person: Žižek’s Disparity and the Case of Michael Haneke.” LACK III; Psychoanalysis & Separation. Clark University, Worcester, MA, May 9-11, 2019.

“Dickens’ Uncanny Flicker Effect: Projection, Characterization, Looking Ahead to Cinema.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA). St. Petersburg, Florida, Oct 11-14, 2018.