portrait of Kieran Murphy
Associate Professor • Director of Graduate Studies
French
kieran.murphy@colorado.edu
303-492-7006

HUMN 333
Ìę

Office Hours:
Mondays 12:20PM - 2:20PM and by appointment

Specialties

  • Nineteenth Century
  • Haiti
  • Science and Literature
  • Atlantic Studies

Biography

Kieran Murphy is a native of Paris. After the BaccalaurĂ©at he moved to the United States to study engineering and fine arts at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.Ìę Later, while completing his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, he developed a strong interest in contemporary debates concerning the social and intellectual function of artistic productions in the modern world.Ìę He pursued this interest further as a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he specialized in French literature and philosophy, Haitian culture, and the interactions between literature and science.Ìę Before coming to Boulder he taught in the department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.

Publications

Book

  • Electromagnetism and the Metonymic Imagination (Penn State University Press, AnthropoScene series, 2020)

    Description:

    How does the imagination work? How can it lead to both reverie and scientific insight? In this book, Kieran M. Murphy sheds new light on these perennial questions by showing how they have been closely tied to the history of electromagnetism.

    The discovery in 1820 of a mysterious relationship between electricity and magnetism led not only to technological inventions—such as the dynamo and telegraph, which ushered in the “electric age”—but also to a profound reconceptualization of nature and the role the imagination plays in it. From the literary experiments of Edgar Allan Poe, HonorĂ© de Balzac, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and AndrĂ© Breton to the creative leaps of Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein, Murphy illuminates how electromagnetism legitimized imaginative modes of reasoning based on a more acute sense of interconnection and a renewed interest in how metonymic relations could reveal the order of things.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • "The Air of Liberty: A Transatlantic Perspective." SubStance. 52.1 (2023): 200-206. 50th Anniversary Issue entitled Breathe.

  • "Maroons, Buccaneers, and the Legend of Trou Forban." Atlantic Studies. 20 (2023): 1-17. Special issue entitled Pirates and Zombies, Ed. Alexandra Ganser and Gudrun Rath.

  • "A Timeful Theory of Knowledge: Thunderstorms, Dams, and the Disclosure of Planetary History."ÌęAngelaki: Journal of the Theoretical HumanitiesÌę28.1 (2023): 87-98. Special issue on Water, Ed. Ewa Macura-Nnamdi & Tomasz SikoraÌę

  • “L’imagination volatile.”ÌęLa Revue des lettres modernes.ÌęÉcritures XIXÌę8 (2022):Ìę337-350. Special issue entitledÌęLe RĂ©el invisible. Le MagnĂ©tisme dans la littĂ©rature (1780-1914), Ed. Victoire Feuillebois and Émilie PĂ©zard.

  • “Flaubert's Encyclopedia, Table Turning, and Electromagnetic Rotation.”ÌęInÌęProduire du nouveau ? Arts – Techniques – Sciences en Europe (1400-1900), edited by JĂ©rĂŽme Baudry, Jan Blanc, Liliane Hilaire-PĂ©rez, Marc Ratcliff, Sylvain Wenger, 281-294.ÌęParis: CNRS Editions Alpha, 2022.

  • “What was Tragedy During the Haitian Revolution?”ÌęModern Language QuarterlyÌę82.4 (2021): 417-440.

  • “Induction after Electromagnetism.” InÌęPhysics and Literature: Concepts – Transfer - Aestheticization, edited by Aura Heydenreich and Klaus Mecke, 179-196. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter GmbH, 2021.Ìę

  • “Time and the Hydroelectric Dam.” KronoScope 20.1 (2020): 102-120. Ed. Raji C. Steineck
  • “I am dead: Poe and French Theory.” Loxias 68 (2020). Special issue on L’influence de Poe sur les thĂ©ories, Ed. Nicole Biagioli
  • “Haiti and the Black Box of Romanticism.” Studies in Romanticism 56.1 (2017): 37-54.
    Special issue on Black Romanticism, Ed. Paul Youngquist and Joel Pace
  • “The Occult Atlantic: Franklin, Mesmer, and the Haitian Roots of Modernity.” In The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies, edited by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael J. Drexler, 145-161. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
  • “Electromagnetic Thought in Balzac, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and Joseph Breuer.” SubStance 40.2 (2011): 127-147.
  • “Le MagnĂ©tisme, la grande chaĂźne des ĂȘtres et l’animal Ă©lectromagnĂ©tique.” Epistemocritique. 7 (2011).
    .
  • “White Zombie.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies/Sites. 15.1 (2011): 47-55. Special issue on North America & the Caribbean, Ed. Alec Hargreaves and Martin Munro
  • “Catastrophe Preparedness: ‘Eight Years Later.’” artUS. 26 (2008): 8-13.
  • “Magic and Mesmerism in Saint Domingue.” Paroles GelĂ©es: UCLA French Studies 24 (2008): 31-48.

Editorial Service

  • Editorial Board, Epistemocritique, 2013-present

Honors and Awards

  • Dibner Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library, 2022
  • Schachterle Essay Prize, The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2012