Mitch Murray

About

Mitch R. Murray is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media. He specializes in contemporary literature, science fiction, multiethnic literatures of the United States and Canada, and comics studies. His teaching focuses on how the creative practices of reading and writing make us better interpreters and creators of our shared social reality.

Murray’s recent publications include the collection William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, co-edited with Mathias Nilges, for the University of Iowa Press’s New American Canon series. Gathering leading scholars, plus breakout sci-fi authors Charles Yu and Malka Older, their book demonstrates Gibson’s profound impact on literature, culture, and media of the past 40 years. Murray’s other work appears in field-defining journals like ASAP/Journal, College Literature, Post45 Contemporaries, and Science Fiction Film & Television. His public facing scholarship on contemporary literature and culture, science fiction, and utopia also appears in popular venues like ASAP/J (where he is a contributing editor), Public Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books

He is currently working on a monograph titled The Science Fictional Art, which explores how science fiction has dovetailed with the novelistic category of the artist novel to produce a new form of utopian literature. He is also working on an edited book provisionally titled Teaching Twenty-First Century Literature. For those who teach very recent literature, there is no standard canon or methodology. Making a case for teaching as a too-long undervalued form of scholarly productivity, Murray and the contributors to this volume offer a practical handbook for teaching what they argue are key literary texts of the twenty-first century.

Before joining Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Murray was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at Emory University, where he participated in the Mellon Humanities Pathways Program to develop courses centered on climate change and public communication.

Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, Murray earned his B.A. with First Class Honors at St. Francis Xavier University and his Ph.D. in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Florida, where he was awarded a Graduate School Fellowship and a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

Teaching

Office Hours

Tu/Fr 4:00 - 4:50 PM

Current Courses

Introduction to Literature

Fiction from Film to Internet

The Graphic Novel

 

Publications

Edited Book

William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture. Edited by Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Nilges. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press (New American Canon series), 2021.

Edited Journal

Genres of Empire. Edited by Alyssa A. Hunziker and Mitch R. Murray. Special double issue, College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies 50, nos. 2-3 (2023).

Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals and Chapters in Edited Books

How to Write a Novel in the Present-Indefinite: Charles Yu, Mohsin Hamid, and Speculative  Fiction as Critique.” College Literature 50, nos. 2 – 3 (2023): 186 – 211.

Genres of Empire: An Introduction” (with Alyssa A. Hunziker).  College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies 50, nos. 2 – 3 (2023): 157 – 85.

Introduction: Periodizing Gibson” (with Mathias Nilges). Introduction to William Gibson  and the  Futures of Contemporary Culture, 1 – 17. Eds. Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Nilges.  Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021.

David Mitchell’s Storytelling and the Metalife of Utopia.” ASAP/Journal 5, no. 1 (2020): 181 – 202.

The Work of Art in the Age of the Superhero.” Science Fiction Film and Television 10, no. 1 (2017): 27 – 51.

Public Facing Scholarship

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.

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