Want fewer ads?

James Phelan (born 1951) is an American writer, literary scholar, and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University. He joined the faculty of Ohio State in 1977 after earning his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, he studied with the Chicago School scholar and critic Wayne Booth.

The editor of Narrative (the journal of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature), he has also authored numerous books and articles on narrative theory, including Living to Tell about It (2005), Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative (2007). With Peter J. Rabinowitz, Phelan co-edits the Ohio State University Press book series, The Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Born in Flushing, NY, Phelan graduated in 1972 with a BA from Boston College, where he played on the basketball team.

In 1991 he wrote a memoir called Beyond the Tenure Track: Fifteen Months in the Life of an English Professor. With Peter J. Rabinowitz, he edited A Companion to Narrative Theory (2005). Along with Brian McHale, David Herman, he is one of the three founders of Project Narrative, an initiative at Ohio State University.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "James Phelan", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0