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Marianna Torgovnick, Professor, English, and Director, Duke in New York Program

Contact Info:

Office Location:	323 Allen
Office Phone:	(919) 684-2741, (919) 684-2165
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2026):

• ENGLISH 222S.02, INTRO TO THE WTG OF CREAT. N-F Synopsis

  Social Sciences 109, Th 03:05 PM-05:35 PM

Office Hours:

Wednesdays 1:00-2:30pm and by appointment

Education:

Ph.D.	Columbia University	1975
M.A.	Columbia University	1971
B.A.	New York University	1970

Specialties:

American Literature
Modern to Contemporary
Novels
Postcolonial Literature
British Literature
Other

Research Interests: British Literature; 20th Century/Modernist Studies

Marianna Torgovnick writes on the novel and novel theory, postcolonialism, modernism, and the twentieth century more generally, and especially on contemporary American issues. She specializes equally in British and American literature and culture. She has published Closure in the Novel (Princeton, 1981), and The Visual Arts, Pictorialism, and the Novel: James, Lawrence, and Woolf (Princeton, 1985), Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago, 1990), and Crossing Ocean Parkway (Chicago, 1994), for which she won an American Book Award. Her most recent book is Primitive Passions: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstasy (Knopf, 1997; paperback Chicago, 1998). She is now writing a study called Saving World War II, about memories and perceptions as the century ends. Professor Torgovnick is currently teaching in New York through the Duke in New York Program. For more information, visit her website www.duke.edu/~tor

Areas of Interest:

British Literature
19th-20th Century Novel

Keywords:

U.S. • Britain • Literature • Culture • Novel • War

Postdocs Mentored

• Frances S. McDonald (2013/12-present)  

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Torgovnick, M, Me Thiele, You Tarzan, in Enchanted by Cinema Wilhelm Thiele Between Vienna Berlin and Hollywood (May, 2024), pp. 184-198, ISBN 9781805395362 [doi]
2. McLeod, A, Tenderness, D.H. Lawrence Review (2023)
3. Torgovnick, M, Bomb and Climate Change in Fact and Fiction, New American Studies Journal, vol. 73 (December, 2022), Universitatsverlag Gottingen [doi]  [abs]
4. De Marco Torgovnick, M, Crossing back: Books, family, and memory without pain (September, 2021), pp. 1-152, Fordham University Press, ISBN 9780823297795  [abs]
5. Torgovnick, M, Recipe for Memory, Los Angeles Review of Books (September, 2021), Avidly