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SAGE 4602
- murram8@rpi.edu
- 0009-0006-9688-4876
About
Mitch R. Murray is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media. He specializes in post45 literature, speculative fiction and popular genres,
His solely edited volume Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature: Essays from the Classroom is under contract with the University of Iowa Press. Assembling 33 expert teacher-scholars from across the globe, this first-of-its-kind guide offers provocative critical essays in the service of literature pedagogy.
Murray’s recent publications include the volume William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, co-edited with Mathias Nilges, and essays in ASAP/Journal, ASAP/Review, College Literature, Cultural Critique, Public Books, the volumeTeaching Science Fiction, and others. He hosts Less Worse, an academic podcast about the dystopian state of the present and our collective prospects for a less worse, more utopian future.
Murray is also conducting research for a monograph titled Universe Makers: Utopianism, Fascism, and Speculative Fiction after 1938. This project tells a new history of speculative fiction (SF) since 1938. Using unique archival discoveries, the book traces the origins of this popular genre to a forgotten cohort of fans and amateur writers who built the SF publishing industry in the inter- and postwar periods. These publishing workers saw SF as a democratic, anti-fascist, utopian political program. But today, SF has been co-opted by far-right extremists as a tool to imagine, narrate, and assert their domination over the future. The book recovers a neglected history of SF to argue that its lost utopian aspirations for a democratic, egalitarian future matter now more than ever.
Before joining Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Murray was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at Emory University. Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, Murray earned his BA with First Class Honors at St. Francis Xavier University and his PhD in English at the University of Florida, where he was awarded a Graduate School Fellowship and a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
Teaching
Speculative Fictions
American Horror Stories
Utopia
The Graphic Novel
Bucket List Books
Publications
Edited Books
Murray, Mitch R., editor. Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature: Essays from the Classroom, U of Iowa P, 2028 (under contract).
Murray, Mitch R. and Mathias Nilges, editors. William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, U of Iowa P, 2021.
Edited Journal
Murray, Mitch R. and Alyssa A. Hunziker, editors. Genres of Empire, double special issue of College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, vol. 50, nos. 2-3, 2023.
Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals and Chapters in Edited Books
Murray, Mitch R. “Everyone’s a Critic: On Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature,” Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature: Essays from the Classroom, editedby Mitch R. Murray. U of Iowa P, 2028 (under contract).
---. “The Right to Culture in Fascist Times: On Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun,” Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature: Essays from the Classroom, edited by Mitch R. Murray. U of Iowa P, 2028 (under contract).
---. “Science Fiction as Introductory Literature,” Teaching Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan. MLA P, forthcoming 2027.
---. “Undead Academia: On the Campus Novel of Decline,” Marxism, Form, and Futurity, special issue of Cultural Critique, no. 132, 2026, pp. 80-97.
---. “How to Write a Novel in the Present-Indefinite: Charles Yu, Mohsin Hamid, and Speculative Fiction as Critique,” Genres of Empire, double special issue of College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, vol. 50, nos. 2-3, 2023, pp. 186-211.
---. “David Mitchell’s Storytelling and the Metalife of Utopia.” ASAP/Journal,vol. 5, no. 1, 2020, pp. 181-202.
---. “The Work of Art in the Age of the Superhero.” Science Fiction Film and Television vol. 10, no. 1, 2017, pp. 27-51.
Murray, Mitch R. and Alyssa Hunziker. “Genres of Empire: An Introduction.” Genres of Empire, special double issue of College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, vol. 50, nos. 2-3, 2023, pp. 157-85.
Murray, Mitch R. and Mathias Nilges.” “Introduction: Periodizing Gibson.” William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, edited by Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Nilges, U of Iowa P, 2021, pp. 1-17.
Book Reviews and Review Essays
Murray, Mitch R. “Still Dreaming of Cyberspace.” Review of William Gibson's Neuromancer: A Critical Companion by Graham J. Murphy. Science Fiction Studies, vol. 53, no. 1, 2026, pp. 206-10.
---. “Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century by Kate Marshall.” Review of Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century by Kate Marshall. American Literary History, vol. 37, no. 2, 2025, pp. 613-16.
---. “Get in Loser, We’re Going Theorizing.” Review of Immediacy, Or, The Cultural Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh. ASAP/Review, 25 Jul. 2024.
---. “On Imagined and Science Fictional Futures.” Review of Four Futures by Peter Frase and Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics by Jens Beckert. Mediations, vol. 30, no. 2, 2017.
---. “Realism, Genre, and the Literary Superhero.” Review of Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics by Andrew Hoberek. ImageTexT,vol. 8, no. 3, 2016.
Public Facing Scholarship
Murray, Mitch R. “Disney Trap House, Or, Atlanta’s Atlanta,” ASAP/Review, 5 May 2025.
“Everything Possible with Everything Given,” Public Books. Jan. 19, 2022.
“Thinking Polyphonically: A Conversation with David Mitchell.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Sept. 11, 2020.
“The Worst of All Possible Worlds?” Public Books. July 20, 2020.