Michael W. Clune, PhD

Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities
College of Arts and Sciences

I write about memory, literature, money, and music. Sometimes I work in creative nonfiction and fiction; some problems require academic methods. I believe that literary style isn’t decoration but a form of knowledge. I am on leave during the 2019-20 academic year, supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

American Literature and the Free Market (Cambridge University Press, 2010) examines how postwar writing from Frank O’Hara’s poetry to nineties gangster rap takes on social power by offering an escape from society.

Writing Against Time (Stanford University Press, 2013) explores the effort to create an image immune to the erosive effects of neurobiological time. Elements of this project have appeared in the journals RepresentationsCriticism, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

White Out was chosen as a Best Book of 2013 by The New YorkerNPR’s “On Point,” The Millions, and other venues.

Gamelife appeared in Fall 2015 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Additional Information

I write about memory, literature, money, and music. Sometimes I work in creative nonfiction and fiction; some problems require academic methods. I believe that literary style isn’t decoration but a form of knowledge. I am on leave during the 2019-20 academic year, supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

American Literature and the Free Market (Cambridge University Press, 2010) examines how postwar writing from Frank O’Hara’s poetry to nineties gangster rap takes on social power by offering an escape from society.

Writing Against Time (Stanford University Press, 2013) explores the effort to create an image immune to the erosive effects of neurobiological time. Elements of this project have appeared in the journals Representations, Criticism, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

White Out was chosen as a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, NPR’s “On Point,” The Millions, and other venues.

Gamelife appeared in Fall 2015 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

View CV.

Visit my website.