Christopher Wilson

Professor Emeritus

Photo of Christopher Wilson

Christopher Wilson

Ph.D.

Contact

Email: wilsonc@bc.edu

Education

  • A.B., Princeton University
  • Ph.D., Yale University

Department

English

Publications

Books

  • Learning to Live with Crime: American Crime Narrative in the Neoconservative Turn. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010.
  • Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.  
  • White Collar Fictions: Class and Social Representation in American Literature, 1885-1925. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
  • The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.

Electronic Texts

  • Ěý(2024).

Articles in Scholarly Journals

  • , American Studies vol. 63, no 1 (Spring 2024):81-108.
  • "," Ěý,ĚýĚý,Ěý , February 2022 , pp. 167 - 190
  • ","ĚýCadernos De Literatura Comparada, (44), 73–90.
  • "Domesticating the Afterwar: David Finkel's Thank You For Your ServiceĚý(2013)."ĚýCollege Literature, vol. 48 no. 1, 2021, p.29-58. Project MUSE,Ěý
  • ","ĚýLiterary Journalism Studies,Ěývol. 10 no. 1 (Spring 2018): 113-138.
  • “The Chronicler:  George Packer’s The Unwinding,” at .
  • “Orphans of Our Reading:  The Narrative Journalism of Foster Care,” College Literature 44 (Winter 2017): 58-87.
  • "A Rumor of Noir:  Calvin Trillin About Town(s)," in Journalism:  Theory, Practice, & Criticism, 1 (2016): 1-16.
  • "When Noir Meets Nonfiction," Twentieth-Century Literature 61:4 (December 2015): 484-510.
  • “Going to Ground(s):  The War Correspondent’s Memoir,” Journal of Transnational American Studies6:1 (2015): 1-23.
  • “Michael Lewis and the Business of Sport,” Raritan 43 (Fall 2014): 112-129.
  • “Finding Emma Larkin,” Literary Journalism Studies 6 (Fall 2014): 49-72.
  • "'Ridiculous Impingements of Normalcy': Home Fronts, Good Soldiers, and War Correspondents," War, Literature and the Arts 24 (Spring 2012): 1-25.
  • “’He fell just short of being news:’  Gatsby’s Tabloid Shadows,” American Literature, Volume 84, Number 1, March 2012:  119-149.
  • “The Underwater Narrative:  Joan Didion’s Miami,” Literary Journalism Studies 3 (Fall 2011): 9-29.
  • "Lost Boys and Recovered Classics: Literary and Social Memory in Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (1995)," Journal of American Studies 42 (2008): 107-31.
  • “Where’s Whitey?” Ethnic Criminality and the Problem of the Informant,” Crime, Law, and Social Change (March 2005):  175-198.
  • “Undercover: White Ethnicity and Police ExposĂ© in the 1970s.” American Literature 77 (June 2005): 349-77.
  • “’Let’s Work out the Details:’ Putting Interrogation in Prime Time.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 12 (Spring 2005): 47-64.
  • “The Time of the Crime: Cold Case Squads and American Social Memory.” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 28 (2004): 497-518.
  • "Framing the Shooter: The Globe and the Streets,” Cultural Studies 11 (1997): 390-417.
  • "True and True(r) Crime: Cop Shops and Crime Scenes in the 1980s.” American Literary History 9 (Winter 1997): 718-43.
  • "Stephen Crane and the Police." American Quarterly 48 (June 1996): 273-315.
  • "Unleavened Bread: The Representation of Robert Grant." American Literary Realism 22 (Spring 1990): 17-35.
  • "Containing Multitudes: Realism, Historicism, American Studies." American Quarterly 41 (Sept. 1989): 466-495.
  • "Broadway Nights: John Reed and the City." Prospects 13 (1988): 273-94.
  • "Markets and Fictions: Howells' Infernal Juggle." American Literary Realism 20 (Spring 1988): 2-22.
  • "Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Steady Burghers: The Terrain of Herland." Women's Studies 12 (1986), 271-92. Republished in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work. Ed. Sheryl Meyering (U. Rochester 1989).
  • "Tempests and Teapots: Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing" New England Quarterly, 58 (Dec. 1985), 554-577.
  • "Sinclair Lewis and the Passing of Capitalism." american studies, 24 (Fall 1983): 95-108
  • "'The Pace of Youth': Stephen Crane's Rhetoric of Amusement."  Journal of American Culture 6 (Summer 1983): 31-38.
  • "American Naturalism and the Problem of Sincerity," American Literature 54 (Dec. 1982): 511-527.
  • "The Era of the Reporter Reconsidered: The Case of Lincoln Steffens." Journal of Popular Culture 15 (Fall 1981): 41-49.

Articles in Public Journals

  • "The Making of a Best Seller, 1906" [Essay about Upton Sinclair], New York Times Book Review, Dec. 22, 1985, pp. 1, 25, 27.

Articles in Collections

  • "The Sorry Places:  Cristina Rathbone's A World Apart." In . Edited by David Swick and Richard Lance Keeble (Routledge 2024): 79-92.
  • "Immersion Journalism and the Second Order Narrative."  The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism,Ěýeds. William E. Dow and Robert S. Maguire (New York and London:  Routledge, 2020), 345-359.
  • “Rough Justice: Crime, Corruption, and Urban Governance,” in Christine Bold, ed. U.S. Popular Print Culture, 1860-1920 (Oxford University Press, 2012.
  • “Risk Management: Frank Abagnale, Jr. and the Shadowing of Pleasure,” in Bran Nicol, Patricia Pulham, Eugene McNulty, eds. Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Literature and Film. London & New York: Continuum, 2011.
  • “'The Secrets of the Master’s Deedbox': Class and American Fiction.” The Blackwell Companion to American Fiction. Ed. Robert Lamb and G.R. Thompson. Marlboro, MA.: Blackwell, 2005). 340-55.
  • "The Mulatto in the Iron Mask: Mark Twain and Alexandre Dumas." Reading Without Maps: Cultural Landmarks in a Post-Canonical Age. Ed. Christophe Den Tandt. Brussels:  PEI, 2005. 319-336.
  • "'Out There': Transnationalism and the Other America." Through the Looking Glass: American Studies in Transcultural Perspective. (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1999). 244-257.
  • "Labor and Capital in Jennie Gerhardt." Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt: New Essays on the Restored Text. Ed. James L. W. West III. Philadelphia: U. Penn Press, 1995. 103-114.
  • "Plotting the Border: Pancho Villa, John Reed, and Insurgent Mexico," in Cultures of U.S. Imperialism. Ed. Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
  • "'Unlimn'd They Disappear': Recollecting Yonnondio:  From the Thirties." Ed. Richard W. Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears. The Power of Culture Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993. 39-63.
  • "The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader." The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980. New York:  Pantheon, 1983). 39-64. also reprinted in Japanese edition by Keiso Shobo 1986).
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