John Eakin
Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus of English
PhD: Harvard University, 1966
MA: Harvard University, 1961
AB: Magna cum laude in History and Literature, Harvard College, 1959; Phi Beta Kappa

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Autobiography, biography, and life writing (concepts of self, subject, and person; relation between narrative and identity; auto-ethnography and narrative practices; ethics of life writing).

PARTIAL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS and PRESENTATIONS
Books:
How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves (Cornell University Press, 1999)
For more information on this title, visit The Cornell University Press

Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (Princeton University Press, 1992)

Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton University Press, 1985)

The New England Girl: Cultural Ideals in Hawthorne, Stowe, Howells, and James (University of Georgia Press, 1977)

Editions:
The Ethics of Life Writing. Ed., with Introduction. Cornell University Press, 2004.
For more information on this title, visit The Cornell University Press

American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed., with Introduction. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

On Autobiography , by Philippe Lejeune. Ed., with Foreword. University of Minnesota Press, 1989

Forthcoming Publications and Presentations:
Living Autobiographically: How We Create Our Identities in Narrative, Cornell University Press, fall 2008.

"Eye and I: Negotiating Distance in Eyewitness Narrative," invited lecture to symposium on "Eyewitness Narrative," The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, November 25, 2007.

Recent Articles:
"The Economy of Narrative Identity," Economists' Lives: Biography and Autobiography in the History of Economics. Supplement to History of Political Economy 39 (2007). Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 117-33.

"Narrative Identity and Narrative Imperialism: A Response to Galen Strawson and James Phelan." Narrative 14 (2006): 180-87.

"Selfhood, Autobiography, and Interdisciplinary Inquiry: A Reply to George Butte," Narrative 13 (October 2005): 307-11.

"Living Autobiographically," Biography 28 (June 2005): 1-14.

“What Are We Reading When We Read Autobiography?” Narrative 12 (May 2004): 121-32.

“Poe’s Sense of an Ending.” 1973. Reprinted in The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. G. R. Thompson. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2004. 844-56.

"Breaking Rules: The Consequences of Self-Narration." Biography 24 (Winter, 2001): 113-27.

"Autobiography, Identity, and the Fictions of Memory." Memory, Brain, and Belief. Ed. Daniel L. Schacter and Elaine Scarry. Harvard University Press, 2000. 290-306.

"Autobiography's Origins: Narrative identity and the Emergence of the Extended Self." Foreign Literatures ( Peking University) 20:3 (2000): 3-6. (In Chinese translation).

Works in Progress:
Writing a new book on autobiography and narrative identity

Recent Activities:
Invited lectures at universities in Madrid, Vitoria, and Pamplona, Spain, in April 2003; at the University of British Columbia in October 2003; and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in March 2004. Invited presentation to seminar at the National Humanities Center in June 2004. Invited papers at the University of Hawai'i in June 2005 and at Yale University in October 2005. Invited papers and lectures at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (April 2006); Duke University (April 2006), Halich University, Istanbul (April 2006); Erasmus University, Rotterdam (June 2006); Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (July 2006); Reed College (October 2006), and the University of Verona, Itlay (October 2006).

PARTIAL LIST OF AWARDS
Fellowships: American Council of Learned Societies, 1987; Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 1990