David Kurnick

David Kurnick is a Professor of English at Rutgers University, specializing in 19th-century literature, narrative theory, gender studies, and contemporary Latin American fiction. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has authored seminal works like Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel (2012) and The Savage Detectives Reread (2022). His research bridges historical and theoretical perspectives, examining intersections between sexuality, narrative form, and collective experience.

Education: Ph.D. and M.Phil. in English from Columbia University, A.B. in English from Harvard College. His teaching spans undergraduate courses on Victorian literature, queer theory, and realist fiction, alongside graduate seminars on narrative theory and social imagination.

Research focuses on eroticism in 19th-century realism, queer methodologies, and Latin American contemporary fiction. Awards include the Presidential Outstanding Faculty Scholar Award (2023) and the Sonia Rudikoff Prize (2012). He has held fellowships at the Center for Cultural Analysis and the Columbia Society of Fellows.

Publications include critical essays in New Literary History, ELH, and Bookforum, alongside translations of Julio Cortázar. His work explores how literature reflects societal tensions, from postcolonial identity to mass cultural phenomena.

Active in literary communities, Kurnick engages with modernist and contemporary texts through a lens of social critique, emphasizing the novel’s role in shaping collective thought.