Oren Izenberg

Oren Izenberg works in the history and theory of poetry and poetics, in the forms and functions that an ancient and apparently universal art acquires in America from 1860 to the present. He is particularly interested in questions about the nature and meaning of the category of "the person" as they arise in literature, in philosophy and in cognitive theory, and in the consequences of this inquiry for social thought. He also studies and teaches modern and contemporary American novels and film, with an emphasis on the way different media manage the question of what counts as knowledge in a culture with competing ideas about the value of tradition and of futurity, wisdom and skepticism, and archaic and modern modes of passion and reason.