Rate My Professor Dawn Marlan

Dawn Marlan serves as Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon, with appointments in the departments of German & Scandinavian and SAIL within the College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago (2000), with a dissertation titled "The Ends of Seduction, or, Libertines, Respectable Folks, Vampires, and Harassers"; an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago (1992); and a B.A. in Literature and Languages from Bennington College (1989). Marlan's research specializations include the history and theory of the novel in Europe and the United States, comparative modernism, contemporary fiction, visual culture, and creative writing, particularly literary nonfiction and fiction.

Her key publications encompass scholarly articles such as "The Seducer as Friend: The Disappearance of Sex as a Sign of Conquest in Les liaisons dangereuses" (PMLA, Vol. 116, No. 2, 2001, pp. 314-328), "Broad-Shouldered Rhetoric: The Trump Era and the Peculiar Contempt for Words" (Konturen, Vol. 9, 2017, pp. 34-40), "Emblems of Emptiness: Smoking as a Way of Life in Jean Eustache's La Maman et la Putain" in Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (Reaktion Press, 2004), and "Continuous Separations: Colette Brunschwig's Paul Celan Collages" (Nijmegen University Press, 2003). Marlan has also authored literary nonfiction essays including "In Praise of Fright" (The Atticus Review, 2015), "Ode to Rocky Horror" (The Atticus Review, 2013), and "Sinner in the Mikveh" (Lilith, 2016), alongside book reviews for The Oregonian and Chicago Tribune (2001-2013). Her fiction and nonfiction manuscripts Deaf, Dumb, and Blind and The Passings are represented by Monique DiDonna of MGD Literary. At the University of Oregon since 2004—progressing from Visiting Assistant Professor (2004-2008) and Career Instructor (2008-2012) to Lecturer (since 2012)—she teaches courses on visual cultures, the short story, personal essays, and cultural studies, and engages in the UO Prison Education Program. Previous appointments include Associate Director of the Humanities Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago (2001-2003), Lecturer at Loyola University Chicago (1995-1996), and Instructor at Illinois Institute of Technology (1993-1994). She has delivered presentations at the Triumph of the Will Symposium (2017), Napa Valley Writers’ Conference (2011), and New York State Writers’ Institute (2016).