(full CV is available by request at lisa.siraganian@gmail.com)

Academic Positions

James R. Herbert Boone Chair in Comparative Thought and Literature and Associate Professor (with tenure). July 1, 2019—. Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. The Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD).

Associate Professor (with tenure). 2012–. Assistant Professor. 2005-12. Department of English. Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX).

Administrative Positions

Chair, Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. The Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD). July 1, 2019—.

Ruth Collins Altshuler Director, Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute. Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX). 2018–2019.

Associate Director, Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute. Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX). 2013–2015.

Education

Dedman School of Law, Southern Methodist University.  J.D. May 2019. (Cum Laude. Evening program. One year of coursework at Harvard University)

Johns Hopkins University. English and American Literature. M.A. 2000, Ph.D. 2004 (George E. Owen Dean’s Fellowship. Dean’s Teaching Fellowship)

Oxford University. Faculty of English Language and Literature. B.A. 1997 (First Class Honors, I. Exeter College Fitzgerald Prize)

Williams College. Honors in English Literature. B.A.1995 (Summa cum laude. Elizabeth Shumway Prize in English. Phi Beta Kappa junior year)

National and Residential Fellowships

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New Directions Fellowship. 2015-2018. (For Legal History and History of Capitalism advanced study at a law school).

American Council for Learned Societies [ACLS] Fellowship. 2015-2016.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Visiting Scholar Residential Fellowship. 2011-2012.

University at Buffalo, Humanities Institute (Buffalo, New York). Charles D. Abbott Library Research Fellowship. Summer 2009.

Dartmouth College, English Department and Humanities Center (Hanover, NH). Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellowship. 2003-2005.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Humanities Graduate Fellowship. 1997-1998.

Publications

Book Editor

Editor, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Tenth Edition. Volume D. 1914-1945. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. In production for publication in 2021.

Books

Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020. Forthcoming. 288 pages.

Do collectivities intend to act and speak like individuals, like persons? The possibility that collective entities might mean to act and speak like us animated a diverse set of American writers, artists, and theorists of the corporation in the first half of the twentieth century, stimulating a revolution of thought on intention. Ranging from the legal analysis of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Frederic Maitland, and Harold Laski to the creative writing of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Schuyler, the book explores how disputes over corporate intention provoked conflicting theories of personhood, race, meaning, and interpretation still debated today. In the Oxford UP Law and Literature series, edited by Robert Spoo and Simon Stern.

Modernism’s Other Work: The Art Object’s Political Life. New York: Oxford University Press, January 2012. 272 pages. Paperback, June 2015.

** Shortlisted (one of four finalists) for Modernist Studies Association Book Prize (2013); Reviewed in Radical Philosophy 177 (Jan/Feb 2013): 52-54, Nonsite 8 (Jan 2013); Modernism/Modernity (Sept 2014), American Literary History (online, October 2015).

Articles in Refereed Journals and Book Chapters

“The Epistemological Problem of Good Business: Fictions of Corporate Intention.” In Fictional Discourse and the Law, ed. Hans J. Lind: 163-74. Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2020. <<link>>

“Distributing Agency Everywhere: TV Critiques Postcritique.” For special issue, “Literary Criticism after Postcritique,” ed. Tim Lanzendörfer and Mathias Nilges, Amerikastudien/ American Studies 64, no. 4 (2019): 595-616. <<link>>

“Dreiser’s Anti-Corporate Tools: Veil Piercing and the Novel of Corporate Agency.” American Literary History 30:2 (Summer 2018): 249-77. <<link>>

“Art and Surrogate Personhood.” nonsite.org. Issue #21: Art and Objecthood at 50. (Summer 2017). Online. 7,400 words. <<link>>

“Modernist Poetics After Twitter, Inc.” In The Contemporaneity of Modernism, ed. Michael D’Arcy and Mathias Nilges, 203-215. Routledge, 2015. <<link>>

“Hiding Horrors in Full View: Atom Egoyan’s Representations of the Armenian Genocide.” Revision and republication of “Telling a Horror Story, Conscientiously…” (infra) in The Armenian Genocide Legacy, ed. Alex Demirdjian, 287-302. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. <<link>>

“Don’t Let Me Be Universal; or, the Postwar American Poem.” nonsite.org. Issue #16: Situation. Summer 2015. <<link>>

“Theorizing Corporate Intentionality in Contemporary American Fiction.” Law and Literature 27:1 (Spring 2015): 99-123. <<link>>

“Speculating on an Art Movement: Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.” Modern Fiction Studies 59:3 (Fall 2013): 591-609. <<link>>

“Ang Lee and James Schamus’s Neo-Indies: The Ultimate Movie Machine.” Post45: Peer Reviewed. (December 20, 2011). Online. 14,000 words. <<link>>

“Wallace Stevens’s Fascist Dilemmas and Free Market Resolutions.” American Literary History 23:2 (Summer 2011): 337-361. <<link>>

“‘A Disciplined Nostalgia’: William Gaddis and the Modern Art Object.” In William Gaddis, “The Last of Something,” ed. Crystal Alberts, Christopher Leise and Birger Vanwesenbeeck, 101-114. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. <<Amazon link>>

“Modern Glass: How Williams Reframed Duchamp’s Window.” The William Carlos Williams Review 28:1-2 (2008): 117-139. **Awarded the Walter Scott Peterson Prize for Best Essay in the Williams Carlos Williams Review. <<link>>

“Telling a Horror Story, Conscientiously: Representing the Armenian Genocide from Open House to Ararat.” In Image and Territory: New Essays on Atom Egoyan, ed. Monique Tschofen and Jennifer Burwell, 133-156. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.<<Amazon link>>

“Out of Air: Theorizing the Art Object in Gertrude Stein and Wyndham Lewis.” Modernism/Modernity 10:4 (2003): 657-676. <<link>>

“‘Is This My Mother’s Grave?’: Genocide and Diaspora in Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6:2 (1997): 127-154. <<link>>

Reviews and Shorter Essays

“Thin and Tantalizing: The Armory Show at 100.” The William Carlos Williams Review 32:1 (2015). <<link>>

“The Problem with Post-1955 Art as Literature.” Invited response to Ann Middleton Wagner, A House Divided: American Art Since 1955 (2012). “The Tank,” nonsite.org (July 24, 2012). <<link>>

Selected Grants And Prizes 

Ford Research Fellowship. SMU. 2015.

Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute. Southern Methodist University. Inaugural Faculty Seminar Co-leader and Faculty Fellow, “The Concept of Agency.” 2012-13.

DePole Humanities Award, Dedman College Dean’s Research Council Grant. Southern Methodist University. 2011.

Sam Taylor Fellowship. 2010.

Undergraduate Research Council. Travel and Research Grants. Southern Methodist University. 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011.

Center for Research on Culture and Literature Prize Fellowship. Johns Hopkins University. 2000-2001.

Teaching Experience

See teaching tab for sample syllabi from some of the 15 different graduate and undergraduate courses taught at Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth College, and Southern Methodist University. 

Selected Professional Leadership and Service

Executive Committee, Nominated. Law and the Humanities Forum, Modern Language Association. For 2019 election

Executive Committee, Nominated. 20th- and 21st-Century American Forum, Modern Language Association. For 2018 election

Program Committee, Member. Modernist Studies Association. 2016-2017

Editorial Board. Nonsite.org. 2017-

Executive Committee Member. Division on Literature and Other Arts/Visual Culture Forum. Modern Language Association. 2013-2018

Book Manuscript and Book Prospectus Reviewer (ongoing): Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Modern Language Association Press, Penguin Academic, Continuum Books, W. W. Norton

Journal Article Reviewer (ongoing): American Literary History, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Cinema Journal, Configurations, Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Modernism/modernity, Modern Philology, Nonsite, Paideuma, PMLA, Post45, Twentieth-Century Literature

Affiliate. Post45 Collective, 2014-

Co-Founder and Leader. DFW Working Group (Dallas area faculty writing group). 2009-2011

Selected University and College Leadership and Service

Dean’s Tenure and Promotion Advisory Committee. Dedman College. Nominated and Elected. 2017– (3 year term)

Emerging Leaders Seminar. Office of the Provost, SMU. Nominated by Dean. 2017

Search Committee, Altshuler Interdisciplinary Centennial Professor in Cities, Regions, and Globalization. Dedman College, SMU. 2013-14

Dean’s Task Force on Teaching Evaluation Data. Dedman College, SMU. 2013-15

Interdisciplinary Joint Appointment Task Force. Dedman College, SMU. 2013-14

President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Office of the President, SMU. 2006-2009

Selected Departmental Leadership and Service

Chair. Job Placement Committee. English Department, SMU. 2018-.

Search Committee. Digital Humanities Assistant Professor position. English Department, SMU. 2017-18.

Executive Committee. English Department, SMU. 2012-15

Graduate Review Committee. English Department, SMU. 2013-14

Job Placement Committee. English Department, SMU. 2013-present

Graduate Budget Committee. English Department, SMU. 2012-2013

Job Placement Advisor. English Department, SMU. 2012-2013, 2017-18

Graduate Studies Committee. English Department, SMU. 2006-present

Graduate Admissions Committee. English Department, SMU. 2007-2011, 2013-2014

Dissertation Advisor. Director and committee member. English Department, SMU. 2012-present

Graduate Mentor. English Department, SMU. 2010-present

English Major Advising. English Department, SMU. 2006-present

Conference Talks and Invited Lectures

Over 50+ conference presentations and invited lectures since 2000 at (for example) MLA, MSA, ALA, Narrative, SCMS, and at CUNY, Emory University, Oberlin College, UC Santa Barbara, University of Rochester, York University, Concordia University, UC Irvine, Harvard University, University of Stockholm, and Uppsala University.

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