UNC Greensboro|Directory|Christian Moraru

Christian Moraru

Christian Moraru

Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor
in the Humanities and Professor of English

English

Email Address: c_moraru@uncg.edu

Phone: 336.334.5311

Education |
Teaching |
Research, Publishing, and Professional Development |
Publications |
Links |
Events, Lectures, Major Talks

Christian Moraru is Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at UNC Greensboro. He specializes in critical and New Materialist theory, contemporary American fiction, and comparative and World Literature, with emphasis on postmodernism and its post-Cold War successors. His recent publications include monographs such as Cosmodernism: American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary (2011), Reading for the Planet: Toward a Geomethodology (2015), and Flat Aesthetics: Twenty-First-Century American Fiction and the Making of the Contemporary (2023). He is the editor of Postcommunism, Postmodernism, and the Global Imagination (2009) and coeditor of The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (2015), Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), Francophone Literature as World Literature (2020), Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the Twenty-First-Century Conceptual Commons (2022), The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory (2022), and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Postmodernisms.

Education

Ph.D. Double Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature, Indiana Univ. Minor: Theory, 1998
M.A. English, Indiana Univ., 1996
M.A. Comparative Literature, Indiana Univ., 1995
B.A. Literary Studies/Romanian-Classics, Univ. of Bucharest, Romania, Diploma in Philology
(M.A.-equivalent). Minor: Latin, 1984

Teaching

Christian Moraru has taught at several universities. At UNCG, he offers regularly graduate courses such as English 740. Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern American Literature; English 704. Studies in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory; English 650. Modern Literary Theory; and English 549. The Critical Canon and Contemporary Issues. His undergraduate classes range from English 303. Critical Approaches to the Study of Literature to English 252. Major American Authors: Realist to Modern, English 208. Topics in Global Literature, and English 202. European Literary Classics: Enlightenment to Modern. He has directed Ph.D. dissertations and M.A. theses in his field since 2000.

View Christian Moraru’s CV
What I Mean by Teaching: A Note on Pedagogy

Graduate Courses

  • English 740. Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern American Literature
  • English 704 (formerly 651). Studies in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory
  • English 656. Contemporary British and American Literature
  • English 650. Modern Literary and Cultural Theory
  • English 565. American Prose after 1900
  • English 557-51. Contemporary British and American Poetry
  • English 551. Modern Literary Theory
  • English 549. The Critical Canon and Contemporary Issues
  • English 534. The Modern American Novel

Undergraduate Courses

  • English 380. Literature and the Environment
  • English 316. Studies in Human Rights and Literature
  • English 353. The Contemporary Novel
  • English 352. The Twentieth-Century American Novel
  • English 347. Topics in Post-1800 Literature: Globalization and the Geopolitics of Identity in the Recent World Novel
  • English 315. Postcolonial Literatures
  • English 303. Critical Approaches to the Study of Literature. Speaking- and Writing-Intensive
  • English 252. Major American Authors: Realist to Modern
  • English 208. Topics in Global Literature
  • English 202. European Literary Classics: Enlightenment to Modern
  • FMS 107. Freshman Seminar in World Literature
  • English 105. Introduction to Narrative

RESEARCH, PUBLISHING, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
A Note on Teaching, Students, and Scholarship

In his undergraduate and graduate courses alike, Christian Moraru urges students to use the class to put their work in the larger, more demanding, and increasingly competitive perspective of professionalism and academic performance. In particular, his graduate offerings are systematically geared toward reading and writing carrying potential for publication and presentation outside UNCG. While fulfilling the course’s requirements remains the basic goal, students are invited to take these requirements as an opportunity to think about themselves as part of the broader academic community, with its standards, idioms, methods, tools, formats, resources, challenges, and venues. Along these lines, here are a few questions routinely raised in his classes: Where do I stand as a scholar, teacher, critic, and writer, and which are my goals? What do I need to do to get where I want to be as a well-published researcher? What is or will be my audience? In what kind of scholarly conversation do I wish to intervene based on what I learn here? What steps do I have to take to do that? What are the available resources and instruments? Which are the outlets for my work? What do I have to do to turn my course presentation/paper into a conference talk/journal article/dissertation chapter/writing sample?

Publications

Books

book by Christian Moraru "Flat Aesthetics Twenty-First-Century American Fiction and the Making of the Contemporary"
book edited by Christian Moraru: "The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory"
Francophone Literature as World Literature, Christian Moraru (Anthology Editor)
Romanian Literature as World Literature Christian Moraru (Anthology Editor)
Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the Twenty-First-Century Conceptual Commons. Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, eds.
Reading for the Planet Toward a Geomethodology By Christian Moraru
Cosmodernism American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary By Christian Moraru
The Planetary Turn Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru
Memorious Discourse: Reprise and Representation in Post-Modernism
Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning (Postmodern Culture)
Articles
  • “An Ethos of Attunement: Ruxandra Novac among Objects.” Arrowsmith 25 (2023). Invited.
    An Ethos of Attunement: Ruxandra Novac Among Objects — ARROWSMITH
    Reproduced as “Ecopoetry and the Ethics of Poetic Attunement.” In Handbook of Literary Ethics. Martin Middeke and Martin Riedelsheimer, eds. Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2025. Forthcoming. Invited. 25-p. mss.
  • “Ansatzpunkt Transylvania: Worldbuilding Method and Method-Building World in Hugo Meltzl and the Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum Project.” Transilvania 158, no. 4 (2025): 15-30. 49-p., 13,000-word mss.
    RT4-2025-Moraru.pdf
  • “Embedded with the World: Place, Displacement, and Relocation in Recent British and Postcolonial Fiction.” Études britanniques contemporaines 55 (December 2018). http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5054. 23-p. mss
  • “MAGA Politics, the American University, and the Ecosystem of Knowledge.” American Book Review 45, no. 4 (Winter 2024 [2025]): 39-42. Invited. Project MUSE – MAGA Politics, the American University, and the Ecosystem of Knowledge
  • “Murdoch after Postmodernism: Metafiction, Truth, and the Aesthetic of Presence in The Black Prince.” Études britanniques contemporaines 58 (October 2020). Invited. https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/9853.
  • “Periodization.” The Encyclopedia of American Fiction, 1980-2020. Edited by Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen J. Burn, and Lesley Larkin. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, vol. 2, 1053-1062. Invited.19-p. mss. The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020 | Wiley Online Books
  • “Plagiarism, Creativity, and the Communal Politics of Renewal.” Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review. Vol. 1. Edited by Joseph Tabbi. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 319-325. Invited. Reprinted in revised form from electronic book review. https://electronicbookreview.com/publications/plagiarism-creativity-and-the-communal-politics-of-renewal/. Posted June 21, 2007.
  • “Planetary Poetics.” Globalization and Literary Studies. Edited by Joel Evans. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 305-17. Invited. Globalization and Literary Studies | Cambridge University Press & Assessment Translated into Hungarian (“Planetáris poétikák”) by Kovács Péter Zoltán, Korunk XXXIII, no. 11 (2022): 9-19.
  • “Postfuturism: Contemporaneity, Truth, and the End of World Literature.” Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the Twenty-First-Century Conceptual Commons. Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, eds. New York: Bloomsbury. 2022. 179-198.
  • “Postmodernism, Cosmodernism, Planetarism.” The Cambridge History of Postmodernism. Edited by Brian McHale and Len Platt. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 480-496. Invited.
  • “Revisionary Strategies.” Chapter 7 of American Literature in Transition: 1990 – 2000. Edited by Stephen Burn, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 199-214. Invited.
  • “Topodemocracy: Joseph O’Neill and the Spatial Sublime.” Études britanniques contemporaines 57 (December 2019). 25-p. mss. Topodemocracy: Joseph O’Neill and the Spatial Sublime
  • “Weltliterature? American Literature after Territorialism: Manifesto for a Twenty-First-Century Critical Agenda.” American Literature as World Literature, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018, pp. 127-147. Invited.
  • “Worlding Comparative Literature.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory. Jeffrey R. Di Leo and Christian Moraru, eds. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. 2022. 101-118.

Events, Lectures, and Other Major Talks

Christian Moraru
Christian Moraru