Palmer Rampell
Palmer Rampell is one of the Ƶ's 2018-2019 Visiting Scholars.
Ph.D. in American Literature, Yale University, 2017
Genres of the Person in Post-World War II America
Many critics have claimed that literature helps us understand what it means to be human. But they rarely suppose that genre fiction—science fiction, horror, romance, etc.—is literature. “Genres of the Person in Post-World War II America” argues that postwar genre writers demonstrated the value of their star-crossed lovers, aliens, and monsters by engaging in contemporary debates about the private person. While American legal scholars, judges, and the general public applied privacy to issues like abortion, child abuse, and euthanasia, genre writers examined the rhetoric, narratives, and emotions underlying ideas of the private person.