Project Narrative

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Howard Sklar discuss Bernard Malamud’s “Idiots First,” which was published in Malamud’s 1963 collection with the same title. Howard Sklar is a senior university lecturer in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki, where he also has the title of docent– equivalent to associate professor in the United States– in English philology. In addition, Howard holds the title of docent in literary studies with a special emphasis in Narrative Theory at Tampere University in Finland. Howard is the author of The Art of Sympathy in Fiction: Forms of Ethical and Emotional Persuasion, published in 2013, and the author of numerous essays on subjects ranging from affective responses to narratives, to narrative ethics, from Jewish-American literature, to representations of intellectual disability. 

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Wai Chee Dimock discuss Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” a story first published in The New Yorker in 1948. Wai Chee Dimock is William Lamson Professor Emerita of English and American Studies at Yale University. She has written influentially about climate change, public health, and indigenous communities, and in much of her work, she has called attention to the interrelations between humans and non-humans. Dimock’s books include Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time from 2006, Shades of the Planet, and Weak Planet. Her 1996 book Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy was reissued in 2021. Dimock recently completed another book, Microbes and Machines: Repairing a Damaged Planet with Nonhuman Actors. From 2016 to 2021, Dimock served as editor of PMLA, and, in her retirement, she’s writing a Substack newsletter, Dog Stories, which features discussions of dogs in life and literature.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Gerald Prince discuss Guy de Maupassant’s 1884 story, “La Parure,” or “The Necklace” in English. Prince reads the 1924 translation by Ernest Boyd. Gerald Prince is professor of French and Francophone studies in the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Prince is one of the preeminent scholars of his generation in the fields of narratology and of 20th and 21st century French literature. Prince’s books include Métaphysique et technique dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Sartre, A Grammar of Stories, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, A Dictionary of Narratology, Narrative as Theme, Guide du Roman de Langue Française (1901-1950), and Guide du Roman de Langue Française (1951-2000). In 2013, Prince received the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Narrative.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Fritz Breithaupt discuss a segment from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, Elective Affinities. That segment is entitled “The Two Strange Children,” and it was translated by George Barry in 1885. Elective Affinities was Goethe’s third novel, published in 1809. Fritz Breithaupt is Professor of German in the Department of Francophone, Italian and Germanic studies, and also Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his other duties at Penn, Breithaupt directs the Experimental Humanities Laboratory. In the course of his career, Breithaupt has produced a substantial and highly influential body of work in both German and English across the fields of Germanic studies, empathy studies, and narrative studies. Three of his books include: Jenseits der Bilder: Goethes Politik der Wahrnehmung (in English, Beyond Images: Goethe’s Politics of Perception), The Dark Sides of Empathy, and The Narrative Brain. Breithaupt’s most recent book is on the first-time experience and transformative experience, which has been published in German but not yet in English.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Jonathan Culler discuss Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever,” which was first published in Liberty Magazine in 1934, and then included in her 1936 collection, The World Over. Jonathan Culler is the class of 1916 Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. Culler has been one of the most distinguished and productive literary and critical theorists of his generation. Among his 11 single-authored books are: the 1975 volume, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature, which won the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize for the best book by an MLA member in that year; the 1982 volume, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism, which lucidly explicated the then still emerging movement called deconstruction; and the 1997 book, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, which has been translated into more than 25 languages. Throughout his career, Culler has conducted extended engagements with narrative, narrative theory, and lyric theory, and in 2015, he published Theory of the Lyric. Among Culler’s many recognitions are his elections to several distinguished scholarly groups, including: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001; the American Philosophical Society, 2006; and the British Academy, 2020. The International Society for the Study of Narrative has selected Culler as the winner of the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award for 2026.