Dr. Nancy Ruttenburg

Biography

Nancy Ruttenburg is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature at Stanford University, where she also holds courtesy appointments in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literatures. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford in 1988 and has held faculty positions at prestigious institutions including Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University, where she served as chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2002 to 2008. Her research interests focus on the intersection of political, religious, and literary expression in colonial and antebellum America and 19th-century Russia, particularly the development of liberal and non-liberal forms of democratic subjectivity. Ruttenburg is the author of several influential works, including 'Democratic Personality: Popular Voice Trial American Authorship' and 'Dostoevsky's Democracy.' She has been recognized with numerous fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her teaching and research encompass topics such as the history of the novel and the theory of global literature, with a keen interest in the interplay of self-making and self-loss in American narratives.

Research Interests

Experience