Faye Halpern teaches and researches in the areas of nineteenth-century American literature, narrative theory, and pedagogy. Her research in nineteenth-century American literature has focused on sentimentality and the ethical and disciplinary questions it raises. This research has taken Halpern from antebellum sentimental novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin  to postbellum realist novels like Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. She also writes on and teaches narrative theory, with a particular interest in unreliable narrators and the ethical issues around literary sympathy.

She is the author of two books, Sentimental Readers: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of a Disparaged Rhetoric (University of Iowa Press, 2013) and The Afterlife of Sympathy: Reading American Literary Realism in the Wake of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). Her recent articles have examined unreliable narration in The Remains of the Day, rhetorical passing and narrative communication in The Marrow of Tradition, and the ethics of close reading. Her article, “The Morphology of the SoTL Article: New Possibilities for the Stories that SoTL Scholars Tell About Teaching and Learning” received Teaching and Learning Inquiry’s“ Article of the Year” Award for 2023.

Halpern’s current project examines how literary scholars came to be skeptical of authorial intention and how a return to authorial intention can open new interpretive and pedagogical possibilities.

Selected Publications

The Afterlife of Sympathy: Reading American Literary Realism in the Wake of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. U of Massachusetts P, 2024.  

Sentimental Readers: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of a Disparaged Rhetoric. U of Iowa P, 2013.  

“Against the Ethics of Close Reading: Close Readers, Lay Readers, and Critical Humility.” symplokē, vol. 32, no. 1–2, 2024, pp. 351-356.

“The Morphology of the SoTL Article: New Possibilities for the Stories that SoTL Scholars Tell About Teaching and Learning.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry, vol. 11, no. 8, 2023, pp. 1-23. Recipient of their “Article of the Year” Award for 2023.

“Charles Chesnutt, Rhetorical Passing, and the Flesh-and-Blood Author: A Case for Considering Authorial Intention.” Narrative, vol 30, no. 1, 2022, pp. 47-66.

Curriculum Vitae