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Gail Finney
Professor of Comparative Literature
Department Chair of German and Russian
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
2007 Recipient, Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate/Professional Teaching
Email: gefinney@ucdavis.edu
Phone: 530.752.1125
Office: 909 Sproul Hall
Office Hours
Introduction
Gail Finney received her A.B. degree in German at Princeton and her
Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in comparative literature. She taught for eight
years at Harvard before coming to UC Davis in 1988. Her interests in
19th- and 20th-century Western European literature and in literary
theory are reflected in her books The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden
Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth-Century Fiction; Women in
Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the
Century; Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy (ed.);
Christa Wolf; and Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century
Germany: Text as Spectacle (ed.). She is currently working on a book
entitled The Dark Side of the Screen: The Cinema of Family Trauma in
Contemporary America.
Research and Teaching Interests
- European Realism, Naturalism, Fin-de-Siecle, and Modernism
- Drama and Performance
- Psychoanalysis and Literature/Film (especially trauma theory)
- Visual Culture
- Gender Studies
Education
- Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley (1980)
- M.A., Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley (1975)
- A.B., German, Princeton University (summa cum laude, 1973)
Selected Publications
- The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth-Century (Niemeyer, 1984).
- Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century (Cornell Univ. Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1991).
- Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy (ed.) (Gordon and Breach, 1994).
- "Revolution, Resignation, Realism: 1830-1890." The Cambridge History of German Literature. Ed. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997; in paper 2000. Pp. 272-326.
- "Of Walls and Windows: What German Studies and Comparative Literature Can Offer Each Other." Comparative Literature, 49 (Summer 1997), 259-66.
- Christa Wolf (Twayne/Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1999).
- Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle (ed.) (Indiana Univ. Press, 2006).
- "What's Happened to Feminism?" Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization: The American Comparative Literature Association 2004 Report on the Discipline. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006. Pp. 114-26.
- The Dark Side of the Screen: The Cinema of Family Trauma in Contemporary America (in progress).
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Gail FinneyProfessor of Comparative Literature 2007 Recipient, Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate/Professional Teaching Email: gefinney@ucdavis.edu |
Introduction
Gail Finney received her A.B. degree in German at Princeton and her
Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in comparative literature. She taught for eight
years at Harvard before coming to UC Davis in 1988. Her interests in
19th- and 20th-century Western European literature and in literary
theory are reflected in her books The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden
Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth-Century Fiction; Women in
Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the
Century; Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy (ed.);
Christa Wolf; and Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century
Germany: Text as Spectacle (ed.). She is currently working on a book
entitled The Dark Side of the Screen: The Cinema of Family Trauma in
Contemporary America.
Research and Teaching Interests
- European Realism, Naturalism, Fin-de-Siecle, and Modernism
- Drama and Performance
- Psychoanalysis and Literature/Film (especially trauma theory)
- Visual Culture
- Gender Studies
Education
- Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley (1980)
- M.A., Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley (1975)
- A.B., German, Princeton University (summa cum laude, 1973)
Selected Publications
- The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth-Century (Niemeyer, 1984).
- Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century (Cornell Univ. Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1991).
- Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy (ed.) (Gordon and Breach, 1994).
- "Revolution, Resignation, Realism: 1830-1890." The Cambridge History of German Literature. Ed. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997; in paper 2000. Pp. 272-326.
- "Of Walls and Windows: What German Studies and Comparative Literature Can Offer Each Other." Comparative Literature, 49 (Summer 1997), 259-66.
- Christa Wolf (Twayne/Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1999).
- Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle (ed.) (Indiana Univ. Press, 2006).
- "What's Happened to Feminism?" Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization: The American Comparative Literature Association 2004 Report on the Discipline. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006. Pp. 114-26.
- The Dark Side of the Screen: The Cinema of Family Trauma in Contemporary America (in progress).