Dr. Patrick F. Fessenbecker

Office: 128-A G Building

Phone: 290 1035

Dr. Patrick Fessenbecker received his doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University in 2014. His current book project, entitled The Ideas in Stories, uses the reflections on moral deliberation and agency in a series of nineteenth-century British narratives as the primary examples for a broader argument about the value intellectual content can give to a work of literary art. He works more generally on issues in philosophy and literature, especially the philosophy of literature.

Dr. Fessenbecker has presented research at a variety of conferences, including the general meetings of the American Comparative Literature Association, the North America Victorian Studies Association, and the Northeastern Victorian Studies Association. His reviews have appeared in Modern Language Notes, Review 19, and the Journal of Literary Theory, among other venues. His essays have appeared in journals like Victorian Studies, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Studies in English Literature, and his award-winning essay “In Defense of Paraphrase” appeared in New Literary History. His most recent essay, “Sympathy, Vocation, and Moral Deliberation in George Eliot,” will appear in the Summer 2018 issue of ELH. He is currently on leave as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Uses of Literature at Southern Denmark University.