Contributors
- Contributors
Jan Alber is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Freiburg in Germany. The author of a critical monograph titled Narrating the Prison: Role and Representation in Charles Dickens’ Novels, Twentieth-Century Fiction, and Film (Cambria Press, 2007), and the coeditor of several other books, he has written articles that were published or are forthcoming in journals such as Dickens Studies Annual, Journal of Popular Culture, Short Story Criticism, and Style. His new project focuses on unnatural scenarios in postmodernist novels and plays.
Jens Brockmeier, a senior scientist at the Free University of Berlin with a background in philosophy and psychology, is presently a visiting professor in the Psychology Department of the University of Manitoba and a senior research fellow at the Center for Narrative Research of the University of East London’s School of Social Science. He has been involved in various interdisciplinary projects investigating narrative as a psychological, linguistic, and cultural form and practice. His main interest is in the function of narrative for autobiographical memory, personal identity, and the understanding of time. [End Page 133]
Henry John Pratt earned his PhD from The Ohio State University in 2005 and is currently an assistant professor of philosophy at Marist College. He specializes in aesthetics, concentrating recently on problems having to do with the value of art, the rational comparability of artworks, and the philosophy of comics.
Andreea Deciu Ritivoi is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work focuses on narratives of identity in the context of radical political and cultural change. The editor of Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz (Rodopi, 2003), she is the author of Yesterday’s Self: Nostalgia and the Immigrant Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002) and Paul Ricoeur: Tradition and Innovation in Rhetorical Theory (State U of New York P, 2006).
Marie-Laure Ryan is scholar in residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of many articles and three books: Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory (Indiana UP, 1991), Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Johns Hopkins UP, 2001), and Avatars of Story: Narrative Modes in Old and New Media (U of Minnesota P, 2006). She has also edited Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory (Indiana UP, 1999) and Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling (U of Nebraska P, 2004) and coedited the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (Routledge, 2005).
Deborah Schiffrin earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 and has taught at Georgetown University since then. Her areas of research include discourse analysis, narratives, and sociolinguistic variation. She is the author of Discourse Markers (Cambridge UP, 1987), Approaches to Discourse (Blackwell, 1994) and In Other Words: Variation in Reference and Narrative (Cambridge UP, 2006).
Murray Smith is professor of film studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. He is the author of Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford UP, 1995) and Trainspotting (BFI, 2002) and the coeditor of Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford UP, 1997) [End Page 134] and Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Blackwell, 2006). His research interests include the psychology of film viewing and the place of emotion in film reception, as well as the philosophy of film, music, and art more generally. He is currently working on the implications of evolutionary theory for film culture. [End Page 135]
