Professional Bio
Peter DeGabriele specialises in the study of eighteenth century literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on the relation between literary texts and the political philosophy and epistemology of the period. His book manuscript is entitled The Literary Theory of the Political: Sovereign Space and Literary Form in Eighteenth–Century England. It argues that the literature of the eighteenth century provides a complex and far reaching theory of the political that extends and complicates that found in the political philosophy of the period, and which makes pertinent interventions in the debates of contemporary political philosophy. He has had an article on Daniel Defoe and Thomas Hobbes published in ELH, and an article on Edward Gibbon published in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. He is also co-editor of a special issue of Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious on the concept of semblance.
Education:
Ph.D. 2009 The University at Buffalo-SUNY
M.A. 2006 The University at Buffalo-SUNY
B.A. 2002 The Australian National University
Teaching Interests:
Eighteenth-Century British Literature; Literary Theory
Recent Courses:
- The Polite Eighteenth Century
- The Eighteenth-Century British Novel
- Eighteenth Century Literature: Satire and Sentiment
- Political Philosophy and Eighteenth Century Fiction
Publications
"Sympathy for the Sovereign: Sovereignty, Sympathy, and the Colonial Relation in Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Project Muse, 51.1 (2012).
“Intimacy, Survival, and Resistance: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year,” ELH, 77.1, 2010.
Editor (With Sol Pelaez and Shane Herron) of “Semblance,” a special issue of Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious, 2007.
