Doty C.V.

Benjamin J. Doty
Curriculum Vitae
Department of English and Comparative Literature
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Greenlaw Hall, Campus Box #3520
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
bdoty@email.unc.edu
EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, English, expected 2016.
M.A. Auburn University, English, 2010.
B.A. Mississippi State University, English, 2008.
DISSERTATION
The Anatomy of Conscience: Science, Ethics, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century American
Literature. Directed by Jane F. Thrailkill.
This study argues that nineteenth-century writers take emerging scientific models of
embodiment as opportunities to explore the bodys role in ethical and religious life. I
argue that writers including Hannah Foster, Charles Brockden Brown, Robert
Montgomery Bird, Herman Melville, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. participate in
debates about embodiments challenges to prevailing ethical and theological viewpoints.
I conclude that these writers posit alternative modes of embodiment that allow for agency
and responsibility within physiological bounds.
PUBLICATIONS
Refereed Journal Articles
Digesting Moby-Dick. Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, forthcoming.
Satire, Minstrelsy, and Embodiment in Sheppard Lee. Early American Literature 51.1 (2016),
forthcoming.
Book Chapter
William Faulkners Embodied Subjectivities. Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature:
Ethics and the Reconstitution of Subjectivity. Ed. Donald Wehrs. Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 2013. 111-131.
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
201516

Dissertation Completion Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill Graduate School.

2015

Hobby Dissertation Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill Department of English and

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Comparative Literature. (Declined)
2014

Laurence G. Avery Award for excellence in teaching literature, UNC Chapel Hill
Department of English and Comparative Literature.
Doris Betts Award for excellence in teaching writing, UNC Chapel Hill
Department of English and Comparative Literature.

2013

Robert Bain Award for outstanding achievement in nineteenth-century American

literature, UNC Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature.

2010

Varian C. Burkhardt Award for most outstanding MA student, Auburn University

Department of English.

SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2015

The Ethical Content of Habit in the Early American Republic, Society for
Comparative Literature and the Arts, New Orleans, LA.

2014

The Digestive Unconscious of Moby-Dick, C19: The Society of NineteenthCentury Americanists, Chapel Hill, NC.

2013

Seeing Neurosentimentally: Abolitionist Literature and the Moral Force of

Mental Vision, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA.
Life is simply a huge joke!: Alice Jamess Humor and the Physiology of
Memory, Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts, Greensboro, NC.
The Moral of the Story: Re-presenting Moral Insanity in Robert Montgomery
Bird's Sheppard Lee, Southern Association for the History of Medicine and
Science, Charleston, SC.

2010

Levinas and the Poor White in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, American

Comparative Literature Association, New Orleans, LA.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Teaching Fellow, August 2011present. Instructor of record unless otherwise noted.
Major American Authors (Spring 2015)
Introduction to American Literature (Spring 2014)
Medicine, Literature, and Culture (Fall 2012; TA for Jane F. Thrailkill)
Composition and Rhetoric (Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2014)
English Composition II (Spring 2012)
English Composition I (Fall 2011)

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Auburn University
Graduate Teaching Assistant, August 2008May 2010. Instructor of record.
English Composition II (Spring 2010)
English Composition I (Fall 2009)
SERVICE AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
201416

Steering Committee, Altacs in Academe Carolina Seminar. UNC Chapel Hill.

2014-15

Graduate Academic Counselor, UNC Chapel Hill Learning Center.

2013-14

Graduate Forum Co-chair, UNC Chapel Hill Department of English and

Comparative Literature

2013

Panelist, McNair Scholars Panel on Graduate Education. UNC Chapel Hill.

2010

Organizer and Panel Chair, Auburn University English Graduate Association

Research Colloquium.
Secretary, English Graduate Association, Auburn University Department of
English.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Nineteenth-century American literature
Science, medicine, and literature
Medical humanities
LANGUAGES
Reading proficiency: French and Spanish

Science and technology studies

Cognitive literary studies
Critical race theory