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STEVIC Aleksandar

Assistant Professor

Email: aleksandarstevic@ln.edu.hk

Tel: 2616 7799

  • Biography

    Aleksandar (Sasha) Stević was educated in Serbia and the United States, receiving his B.A. and M.A. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Belgrade and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. Before joining Lingnan, he has held a range of academic appointments in Europe, the US, and the Middle East, including a Junior Research Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge. Professor Stević’s research extends across a range of fields, including the nineteenth and twentieth century novel, history and theory of tragedy, Holocaust representation, and the history of aesthetics. Much of his work explores the relationship between the evolution of literary genres and social and intellectual history. His book Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning (Virginia, 2020) focuses on the novels of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, Samuel Butler, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust, in order to reexamine the Bildungsroman’s tortured relationship to European modernity. Stević is also a co-editor of The Limits of Cosmopolitanism (Routledge, 2019), an essay collection that explores the meaning of cosmopolitanism across the range of contemporary world literature and the sole editor of The Politics of Tragedy (Belgrade, 2014), a volume in which he collected and translated from English into Serbo-Croatian the major contributions to recent debates about the sociopolitical context of Greek tragedy. In addition to essays in such journals as Comparative Literature Studies, Dickens Studies Annual, Victorian Literature and Culture, and The Journal of Modern Literature, he is the author of the chapter on Stendhal and Balzac in A History of Modern French Literature (Princeton, 2017), and the translator of two books – Shlomit Rimmon-Kennan’s narratological study Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (2007) and Djuna Barnes’ modernist novel Nightwood (2018).


  • Academic & Professional qualifications
    • Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Yale University
    • M.Phil., Comparative Literature, Yale University
    • M.A., Comparative Literature, Yale University
    • School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University
    • M.A., Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Belgrade
    • B.A., Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Belgrade

  • Teaching Experience
    • Assistant Professor of English, Lingnan University (2020-)
    • Assistant Professor of English, Qatar University (2017-2020)
    • Junior Research Fellow in Literary Studies, King's College, Cambridge (2013-2017)
    • Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Hampshire College (2012-2013)
    • Teaching Fellow in Literature and Film Studies, Yale University (2009-2011)
    • Teaching Fellow (Asistent) in Comparative Literature, University of Belgrade (2004-2007)

  • Areas of Interest
    • Comparative History of the Novel
    • Tragedy
    • Aesthetics and Politics
    • History of Criticism
    • Holocaust Representation

  • Research Supervision
    I welcome MPhil and PhD proposals in the following areas:

    • Nineteenth-century fiction (especially Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot; comparative approaches are also welcome)
    • Modernism
    • Theory of the novel broadly conceived, including issues in genre and narrative theory
    • History and theory of tragedy

    Please note that I normally do not supervise work in the areas of American or Postcolonial/Global Anglophone literature and culture.

  • Courses Taught
    • ENG3205 Contemporary Literature in English II- Drama and Poetry

    • ENG3384 The Language of Literature
    • CLA9027 Being Someone: Writing Identity in Contemporary Culture
    • ENG4301 Final Year Project

  • Selected Publications

    Books

    • Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning (University of Virginia Press, 2020).

    • The Limits of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization and Its Discontents in Contemporary Literature, edited by Aleksandar Stevic and Philip Tsang (Routledge, 2019).
    • Politika tragedije [The Politics of Tragedy], edited, with an introduction and translations by Aleksandar Stević (Službeni glasnik, 2014).

    Articles and Book Chapters
    • "Becoming Christopher Okigbo: Aestheticism, Teleology, History." Forthcoming in English Literary History.
    • The Homological Imagination: Toward a Critical History of Political Formalism.” New Literary History 53.3 (2022): 363–390.
    • “The Genre of Disobedience: Is the Bildungsroman beyond Discipline?” Genres of Obedience, a special issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, ed. Marin Wagner and Elystan Griffiths. 56.2 (2020): 158–173.
    • “Introduction.” With Philip Tsang. The Limits of Cosmopolitanism, ed. Aleksandar Stević and Philip Tsang. New York: Routledge, 2019, 1–9.

    • “Unbelonging: Caryl Phillips and the Ethics of Disaffiliation.” The Limits of Cosmopolitanism, ed. Aleksandar Stević and Philip Tsang. New York: Routledge, 2019, 87–104.

    • “Convenient Cosmopolitanism: Daniel Deronda, Nationalism, and the Critics.” Victorian Literature and Culture 45.3 (2017): 593–614.

    • “Stephen Dedalus and Nationalism without Nationalism." Journal of Modern Literature 41.1 (2017): 40-57.

    • “Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self-Invention: Stendhal and Balzac.” A History of Modern French Literature from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Christopher Prendergast. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 414–435.

    • “Intimations of the Holocaust from the Recollections of Early Childhood: Childhood Memories, Holocaust Representation, and the Uses of Nostalgia in Danilo Kiš and Christa Wolf.” Comparative Literature Studies 51.3 (2014): 439–465.

    • “Fatal Extraction: Dickensian Bildungsroman and the Logic of Dependency.” Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): 63–94.

    Translations
    • Đuna Barns, Šuma noći, Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2018 [Serbian translation of Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood]

    • Šlomit Rimon Kenan, Narativna proza, Belgrade: Narodna knjiga – Alfa, 2007 [Serbian translation of Shlomith Rimmon­-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics]

  • Conference Papers
    • Reading Crash with Aristotle and Nussbaum.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Taipei, June 2022.
    • “Caryl Phillips, Aestheticism, and Traumatic Memory,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Chicago, January 2019.
    • The Trouble with Buldung, The Bildungsroman Conference, University of Sydney, Australia, November 2018.
    • “George Eliot and the Question of Ethical Mimicry,” Moralities in the Long 19th Century Conference, Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, Durham University, February 2017.
    • “Monstrous Paratexts: Frankenstein and the Drama of Rewriting,” International Conference on Narrative, University of Amsterdam, June 2016.
    • “The Science of Wealth and the Powers of Fiction: Political Economy, Victorian Fiction, and the Question of Disciplines,” Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines Conference, Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, Durham University, March 2016.
    • “In Search of a Perfect Flower: Proust and the Science of Botany,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 2014.
    • “The Presumption of Innocence: Oliver Twist and the Networks of Care,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Harrisburg, April 2014.
    • “Rescuing Nostalgia: Screen Memories and the Drama of Guilt in Christa Wolf’s Patterns of Childhood,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Boston, March 2013.
    • “Ideological Anxieties into Narrative Anxieties: A Tale of Two Cities and the Problem of Political Violence,” International Conference on Narrative, Washington University in St. Louis, April 2011.
    • “High Art after Bourdieu: Universal Classic, Aesthetic Ideology, and the Failures of Historical Materialism,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 2010.

  • Professional Activities
    • Referee for Bloomsbury Academic; Qatar University Press; Routledge; Children’s Literature Association Quarterly; Comparative Literature Studies; Literature Compass; Romance, Revolution and Reform; Wasafiri.

    • Organizer, “Rethinking Cosmopolitanism across the Nineteenth Century,” MLA Convention, Seattle, WA, January 2020.

    • Chair of the Organizing Committee, Literature in the Gulf Conference, 2019­–20.

    • Organizer & Session Chair, “The Limits of Cosmopolitanism: Complex Identities in the Contemporary Novel,” MLA Convention, Vancouver, Canada, January 2015.

    • Co-convener, King’s College Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Research Seminar, 2014­–15.

    • Baldwin-Dahl Lecture Coordinator, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University, 2009–10.

    • Franke Lecture Series Coordinator, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, Fall 2008.


  • Awards and Honors

    • Research & Knowledge Transfer Fund Award, Lingnan University (2022)
    • Research Publication Reward, Qatar University (2018 & 2020)
    • Stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship in Literary Studies, King’s College, Cambridge (2013–2017)

    • Finalist. The Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (2012)

    • Whiting Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities (2011–2012)
    • Whitney Humanities Center Fellowship, Yale University (2011–2012)
    • John F. Enders Fellowship for research in France, Yale University (Summer 2011)
    • Yale Graduate School Fellowship to attend School of Criticism and Theory (Summer 2009)
    • Yale University Summer Language Institute Fellowship (Summer 2008)
    • Yale University Graduate Fellowship (2007–2011)
    • City of Belgrade Emerging Scholars Award (2004)
    • Danilo Kiš Award, University of Belgrade (2003)