Biography

Professor Rushing was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A., 1991), where he majored in both Literature and Philosophy. He has an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan (1994), and finished his Ph.D. in Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1998 with a thesis on Italo Calvino and Carlo Emilio Gadda.

Specializations / Research Interest(s)

19th and 20th century Italian literature; contemporary Italian fiction; Italian film; critical and interpretive theory, especially psychoanalysis and deconstruction; comparative literary studies; genre; new media; fandom.,

Research Description

• •Mondo Jane: Gender, New Media and the Rise of a Global Austen Culture is the first book-length work to address the world of contemporary Jane Austen fan culture, analyzing the most important and surprising features of contemporary Austen fandom: its strongly post-feminist and anti-feminist stance, its role in both emblematizing and problematizing certain theories of new media and its surprisingly de-territorialized global reach.

Education

• Ph.D.: U.C. Berkeley (1998) M.A.: U. of Michigan (1994) B.A.: U.C. Santa Cruz (1991)

Distinctions / Awards

• •2008, Humanities Council Teaching Excellence Award •2008, Resisting Arrest nominated for the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis Gradiva Award: Best Theoretical Book

External URLs

• Comp Lit Faculty Page

Courses

• A complete list of Professor Rushing's teaching