Dora Zhang

Dora Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on Anglo-American and European modernist fiction, literature and philosophy, narrative theory, affect theory, and visual culture. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Her work bridges literary analysis with interdisciplinary approaches to cultural studies and critical theory.

Her first monograph, Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist Novel (2020), examines experimental forms in modernist works by Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Currently, she is researching contemporary U.S. fiction's treatment of identity as 'type' and editing a Norton Library edition of Woolf's A Room of One’s Own.

Zhang’s publications explore topics like pandemic atmospheres, narrative detail, and the intersections of race, gender, and form in literature. Her awards include the 2013 Ralph Cohen Prize for scholarly excellence. She has contributed commentary to academic podcasts and journals, addressing broader questions about literary studies' future and pedagogy.