Dr Chris Danta

Overview

My research operates at the intersection of literary theory, philosophy and theology. My book Literature Suspends Death theorizes the idea of literature in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot based on the treatment by these writers of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22. I have published articles on Kierkegaard, Blanchot, Stevenson and Coetzee in international peer-reviewed journals such as Textual Practice, Literature & Theology, New Literary History, Substance and Modernism/modernity. More recently, I have been establishing myself in the field of animal studies by examining the often-sacrificial role animals play in modernist literary narrative.

I am currently completing an ARC-funded Discovery project with the title, "The Scientific Ape: the Evolution of the Animal Fable After Darwin". The project examines how the literary form of the fable changes after Darwin in writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Franz Kafka, David Garnett and J.M. Coetzee. It contends that at stake in the post-Darwinian fable is a direct ethical and ontological engagement with the nonhuman animal.

Teaching

I mainly teach 19th and 20th century English literature. At UNSW, I have taught Introduction to Literary Genre; 19th Century Prose; The English Canon; Modernism and Modernity; Jane Austen in Context; Crime Fiction, Theatre and Film.

I am currently convening ARTS 1030: Introduction to English: Literary Genres

Publications

Books

Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot, London and New York: Continuum Press, 2011. pp. 165 hyperlink

Edited Collections

(with Helen Groth) Mindful Aesthetics: Literature and the Science of Mind, London and New York: Continuum Press, forthcoming 2013.

(with Julian Murphet) Special Issue: “Late Coetzee”, Twentieth Century Literature 57.1 2012.

(with Sue Kossew and Julian Murphet) Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, London and New York: Continuum Press, 2011. pp. 165 hyperlink

(with Dimitris Vardoulakis) Special Issue: “The Political Animal”, SubStance 37.3 2008.

Book Chapters

“The cold illucid world”: The Poetics of Gray in Cormac McCarthy’sThe Road. In Styles of Extinction: Cormac McCarthy'sThe Road, ed. Julian Murphet and Mark Steven, London and New York: Continuum Press, 2012.

“Revolution at a Distance: Jane Austen and Personalised History.” In The French Revolution and the British Novel in the Romantic Period, ed. A. D. Cousins, Stephanie Russo and Dani Napton, New York and Oxford, Peter Lang, 2011: 137-52.

“J. M. Coetzee: The Janus Face of Authority.” In Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, ed. Chris Danta, Julian Murphet and Sue Kossew, London and New York: Continuum Press, 2011: xi-xx.

“The Melancholy Ape: Coetzee’s Fables of Animal Finitude.” In Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, ed. Chris Danta, Julian Murphet and Sue Kossew, London and New York: Continuum Press, 2011: 125-40.

“‘The Absolutely Dark Moment of the Plot’: Blanchot’s Abraham”. In After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism, Philosophy, ed. Dimitris Vardoulakis, Leslie Hill and Brian Nelson, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005: 205-221.

“The Animal Substitutes”. In Animals, ed. Julian Davies, Braidwood, NSW: Finlay Lloyd, 2008.

Journal Articles

"Derrida and the Test of Secrecy", Angelaki, forthcoming 2013.

“The Future Will Have Been Animal: Dr Moreau and the Aesthetics of Monstrosity”, Special Issue: “The Uses of Anachronism,” ed. Helen Groth and Paul Sheehan, Textual Practice forthcoming 2012.

"The Metaphysical Cut: Darwin and Stevenson on Vivisection", Victorian Review 36.2 (2010): 51-65.

"Coetzee's Animal Afterlives", Southerly 69.1 (2009).
view article

“Kafka’s Mousetrap: the Fable of the Dying Voice”, Special Issue, “The Political Animal”, ed. Chris Danta and Dimitris Vardoulakis, SubStance 37.3 (2008): 152-167.

“Sarah’s Laughter: Kafka’s Abraham”, Modernism/modernity 15.2 (2008): 343-359.

“‘Like a dog … like a lamb’: Becoming Sacrificial Animal in Kafka and Coetzee”, New Literary History 38.4 (2007): 723-739.

“The Poetics of Distance: Kierkegaard’s Abraham”, Literature & Theology 21.2 (2007): 160-177; doi:10.1093/litthe/frm009

“Two Versions of Death: The Transformation of the Literary Corpse in Kafka and Stevenson”, Textual Practice 20:2 (2006): 281-300.

Other Publications

Review of Iris Bruce's Kafka and Cultural Zionism and Carolin Duttlinger's Kafka and Photography, Modernism/modernity 16.3 (2009): 619-21.

Review of Andrew Benjamin’s Disclosing Spaces: On Painting, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 35, 2005.

Review of Kevin Hart’s The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred, Colloquy, Issue 10, Blanchot, the obscure, 2005.

Review of John Mateer’s Loanwords, Colloquy Issue 7, 2003.

Affiliations and Memberships

UNSW Research Committee
MLA

Interests

The role of animals in literary narrative; the fable; time in literary narrative; French poststructuralist theory; modernism; Swift; Austen; Kafka; Kierkegaard; Stevenson; Blanchot; Borges; Derrida; Coetzee.

Liverpool and Manly Warringah.