• ENGLISH HOME
• MISSION STATEMENT
• ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT
  • CURRENT ADVISING SCHEDULE
• FACULTY
  • BY NAME
  • BY AREA
• UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS
  • B.A. IN ENGLISH
  • ENGLISH EDUCATION/TEACHER CERTIFICATION
  • UNDERGRADUATE ADVISING
• GRADUATE PROGRAMS
  • M.A. IN ENGLISH
  • M.F.A. IN CREATIVE WRITING
  • GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN TEACHING OF WRITING
  • GATEWAY WRITING PROJECT
  • M.A. COURSES
  • M.F.A. COURSES
  • THE M.A. THESIS
  • GRADUATE ADVISING
• COURSES
  • UNIVERSITY REQUIRED WRITING COURSES
  • REQUIRED COURSES FOR THE ENGLISH MAJOR
  • CURRENT COURSE LISTING
  • CREATIVE WRITING COURSES
  • LANGUAGE COURSES
  • LITERATURE COURSES
  • WRITING COURSES
• WRITING CERTIFICATE
  • WRITING CERTIFICATE COURSES
  • CREATIVE WRITING CERTIFICATE
  • TECHNICAL WRITING CERTIFICATE
• GATEWAY WRITING PROJECT
• WRITING LAB
• PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS
  • NATURAL BRIDGE
  • LITMAG
  • DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER
• SIGMA TAU DELTA
• MAKE A GIFT
• CONTACT US

Joseph Carroll

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, U of California, Berkeley
M.A., Comparative Literature, U of California, Berkeley
B.A., English, U of California, Berkeley

Joseph Carroll, recipient of both the Chancellor’s and President’s Award for Research and Creativity, teaches Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Literary Theory, Short Stories, and interdisciplinary honors seminars. He is one of the leading authorities on Darwinian literary theory. Professor Carroll is the author of The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold; Wallace Stevens' Supreme Fiction: A New Romanticism; Evolution and Literary Theory; and most recently Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. He is co-editor of Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader (forthcoming 2010) and co-editor of the journal, The Evolutionary Review: Art, Science, and Culture.

Selected Publications

“Evolutionary Psychology and Literary Study,” in Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed. David Buss, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005): 931-52.

“Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Darwinian Critique,” Philosophy and Literature 29 (2005): 286-304.

“Human Nature and Literary Meaning: A Theoretical Model Illustrated with a Critique of Pride and Prejudice,” in Literature and the Human Animal, ed. Jonathan Gottschall and D. S. Wilson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern, 2005): 76-106. (Previously published in Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature)

“Adaptationist Literary Study: An Introductory Guide,” Ometeca 10 (2006): 18-31.

“The Human Revolution and the Adaptive Function of Literature,” Philosophy and Literature 30 (2006): 33-49.

“Literature and Evolution,” in Human Nature: Fact and Fiction, ed. Robin Headlam Wells and Johnjoe McFadden (London: Continuum, 2006): 63-81.

“The Adaptive Function of Literature,” in Evolutionary Approaches to the Arts, ed. Paul Locher, Colin Martindale, Leonid Dorfman, Vladimir Petrov, and Dimitry Leontiev (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing, 2007): 31-45.

“Evolutionary Approaches to Literature and Drama,” in The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed. Robin Dunbar and Louise Barrett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 637-48.

“An Evolutionary Paradigm for Literary Study,” (target article to which scholars and scientists were invited to respond), Style 42 (2008): 103-35.

“Rejoinder” (reply to 35 scholars writing commentaries on the target article identified in the previous item), Style 42 (2008): 309-412.

“The Cuckoo’s History: Human Nature in Wuthering Heights,” Philosophy and Literature 32 (2008): 241-57.

“Hierarchy in the Library: Egalitarian Dynamics in Victorian Novels,” by John Johnson, Joseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, and Daniel Kruger, Evolutionary Psychology 6 (2008): 715-38.