Gary Saul Morson
Gary Saul Morson is an American literary critic and Slavist. He is particularly known for his scholarly work on the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. Prior to this he was chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania for many years.
Academic career
Gary Saul Morson was born in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He then went to Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. degree at Yale.In 1974 Morson started teaching at the University of Pennsylvania where he later became chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Since 1986 he has been teaching at Northwestern University.
Morson is the editor of a scholarly book series titled Studies in Russian Literature and Theory published by Northwestern University Press, which the publisher described as "reflecting trends within the field of Slavic studies over the years... providing perspectives on Russian literature from all periods and genres, as well as its place in the broader culture."
Personal life
Gary Saul Morson lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife Katharine Porter, a psychiatrist whom he married in 2004. He was previously married to Jane Ackerman Morson with whom he has two children, Emily and Alexander.Selected works
- 1981 – The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia .
- 1986 – Bakhtin, Essays and Dialogues on His Work .
- 1986 – Literature and History: Theoretical Problems and Russian Case Studies .
- 1987 – Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in War and Peace .
- 1989 – Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges .
- 1990 – Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics .
- 1994 – Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time .
- 1995 – Freedom and Responsibility in Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert Louis Jackson .
- 2000 – And Quiet Flows the Vodka, or When Pushkin Comes to Shove
- 2007 – Anna Karenina in Our Time: Seeing More Wisely .
- 2011 – The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture .
- 2012 – The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel .
- 2013 – Prosaics and Other Provocations: Empathy, Open Time, and the Novel .
- 2015 – The Fabulous Future? America and the World in 2040 .
- 2017 – Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn From the Humanities .
- 2023 – Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter .