Jim Phelan, Distinguished University Professor, English, has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy by Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. The presentation of the doctorate will take place on Friday, September 13, as part of events to celebrate the University’s 85th anniversary.

Professor Phelan teaches and writes about the English and American novel, especially from modernism to the present, nonfiction narrative, and narrative theory. He is the first person in the history of the English Department to be awarded both the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award (2007) and the Distinguished Scholar Award (2004). He is the author of five books that develop the contours of a rhetorical theory of narrative. The most recent are Living to Tell About It (2005) and Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative (2007). He edits Narrative, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, and, with Peter J. Rabinowitz and Robyn Warhol, co-edits the Ohio State University Press book series, The Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Phelan has also edited or co-edited numerous volumes, one of which, Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, published by OSU Press, was named as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2012.