portrait of Kieran Murphy
Associate Professor • Director of Graduate Studies
French
kieran.murphy@colorado.edu
303-492-7006

HUMN 333
听

Office Hours:
Mondays 12:20PM - 2:20PM and by appointment

Specialties

  • Nineteenth Century
  • Haiti
  • Science and Literature
  • Atlantic Studies

Biography

Kieran Murphy is a native of Paris. After the Baccalaur茅at he moved to the United States to study engineering and fine arts at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.听 Later, while completing his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, he developed a strong interest in contemporary debates concerning the social and intellectual function of artistic productions in the modern world.听 He pursued this interest further as a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he specialized in French literature and philosophy, Haitian culture, and the interactions between literature and science.听 Before coming to Boulder he taught in the department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.

Publications

Book

  • Electromagnetism and the Metonymic Imagination (Penn State University Press, AnthropoScene series, 2020)

    Description:

    How does the imagination work? How can it lead to both reverie and scientific insight? In this book, Kieran M. Murphy sheds new light on these perennial questions by showing how they have been closely tied to the history of electromagnetism.

    The discovery in 1820 of a mysterious relationship between electricity and magnetism led not only to technological inventions鈥攕uch as the dynamo and telegraph, which ushered in the 鈥渆lectric age鈥濃�攂ut also to a profound reconceptualization of nature and the role the imagination plays in it. From the literary experiments of Edgar Allan Poe, Honor茅 de Balzac, Villiers de l鈥橧sle-Adam, and Andr茅 Breton to the creative leaps of Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein, Murphy illuminates how electromagnetism legitimized imaginative modes of reasoning based on a more acute sense of interconnection and a renewed interest in how metonymic relations could reveal the order of things.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • "The Air of Liberty: A Transatlantic Perspective." SubStance. 52.1 (2023): 200-206. 50th Anniversary Issue entitled Breathe.

  • "Maroons, Buccaneers, and the Legend of Trou Forban." Atlantic Studies. 20 (2023): 1-17. Special issue entitled Pirates and Zombies, Ed. Alexandra Ganser and Gudrun Rath.

  • "A Timeful Theory of Knowledge: Thunderstorms, Dams, and the Disclosure of Planetary History."听Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities听28.1 (2023): 87-98. Special issue on Water, Ed. Ewa Macura-Nnamdi & Tomasz Sikora听

  • 鈥淟鈥檌magination volatile.鈥澨�La Revue des lettres modernes.听脡critures XIX听8 (2022):听337-350. Special issue entitled听Le R茅el invisible. Le Magn茅tisme dans la litt茅rature (1780-1914), Ed. Victoire Feuillebois and 脡milie P茅zard.

  • 鈥淔laubert's Encyclopedia, Table Turning, and Electromagnetic Rotation.鈥澨齀n听Produire du nouveau ? Arts 鈥� Techniques 鈥� Sciences en Europe (1400-1900), edited by J茅r么me Baudry, Jan Blanc, Liliane Hilaire-P茅rez, Marc Ratcliff, Sylvain Wenger, 281-294.听Paris: CNRS Editions Alpha, 2022.

  • 鈥淲hat was Tragedy During the Haitian Revolution?鈥澨�Modern Language Quarterly听82.4 (2021): 417-440.

  • 鈥淚nduction after Electromagnetism.鈥� In听Physics and Literature: Concepts 鈥� Transfer - Aestheticization, edited by Aura Heydenreich and Klaus Mecke, 179-196. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter GmbH, 2021.听

  • 鈥淭ime and the Hydroelectric Dam.鈥� KronoScope 20.1 (2020): 102-120. Ed. Raji C. Steineck
  • 鈥淚 am dead: Poe and French Theory.鈥� Loxias 68 (2020). Special issue on L鈥檌nfluence de Poe sur les th茅ories, Ed. Nicole Biagioli
  • 鈥淗aiti and the Black Box of Romanticism.鈥� Studies in Romanticism 56.1 (2017): 37-54.
    Special issue on Black Romanticism, Ed. Paul Youngquist and Joel Pace
  • 鈥淭he Occult Atlantic: Franklin, Mesmer, and the Haitian Roots of Modernity.鈥� In The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies, edited by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael J. Drexler, 145-161. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
  • 鈥淓lectromagnetic Thought in Balzac, Villiers de l鈥橧sle-Adam and Joseph Breuer.鈥� SubStance 40.2 (2011): 127-147.
  • 鈥淟e Magn茅tisme, la grande cha卯ne des 锚tres et l鈥檃nimal 茅lectromagn茅tique.鈥� Epistemocritique. 7 (2011).
    .
  • 鈥淲hite Zombie.鈥� Contemporary French and Francophone Studies/Sites. 15.1 (2011): 47-55. Special issue on North America & the Caribbean, Ed. Alec Hargreaves and Martin Munro
  • 鈥淐atastrophe Preparedness: 鈥楨ight Years Later.鈥欌�� artUS. 26 (2008): 8-13.
  • 鈥淢agic and Mesmerism in Saint Domingue.鈥� Paroles Gel茅es: UCLA French Studies 24 (2008): 31-48.

Editorial Service

  • Editorial Board, Epistemocritique, 2013-present

Honors and Awards

  • Dibner Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library, 2022
  • Schachterle Essay Prize, The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2012