Department of English
Christopher Ames
Professor of English
Provost and Dean of the College
E-mail: cames2@washcoll.edu
Phone: (800)422-1782, ext. 7202
Office: Bunting Hall, first floor
Education
B.A., University of Texas - Austin; Ph.D., Stanford University.
Teaching Areas
- 20th Century Literature
- Hollywood Films
Published Work
Books
- Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected. University of Kentucky Press, 1997.
- The Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction. University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Articles
- "The Hollywood Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century," Literature/Film Quarterly, forthcoming.
- "The Day of the Locust: 1939 and 1975" in Twentieth Century American Fiction on Screen, ed. Barton Palmer (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
- "Pat Hobby: A Good Man for Structure," in F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Twenty-First Century (U of Alabama Press, 2003).
- "Shakespeare's Grave: The British Fiction of Hollywood." Twentieth Century Literature, (Hofstra University) (Autumn, 2001) 407-430.
- "Carnivalesque Comedy Between the Acts." Twentieth Century Literature, (Hofstra University) (Winter, 1998) 394-408.
- "Modernism and Tradition: The Legacies of Belatedness." Studies in the Literary Imagination, (Georgia State University) (Fall, 1992) 39-61.
- "The Modernist Canon Narrative: Woolf's Between the Acts and Joyce's 'Oxen of the Sun'." Twentieth Century Literature, (Hofstra University) (Winter, 1991) 390-404.
- "Coover's Comedy of Conflicting Fictional Codes." Critique, (Washington D.C.: Heldref Publications) (Winter, 1990) 85-100.
- "Power and the Obscene Word: Discourses of Extremity in Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity Rainbow'." Contemporary Literature, (University of Wisconsin) (Summer, 1990) 191-207.
Honors
- Received the Dupont Grant for Developing Instructional Technology
- Received the Fleur Cowles Fellowship from the Humanities Research Center at University of Texas, Austin
- Received the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award
Biographical Note
Christopher Ames is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Stanford University. Since coming to Washington College in the summer of 2006, Ames has served as Chief Academic Officer and will soon begin giving courses of instruction in the English department. Before coming to Washington College, Ames was the Provost and Senior Vice President at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. Ames was also the Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Agnes Scott College, where he organized the Agnes Scott Writer's Festival and taught courses on film studies, modernist fiction, and postmodernist fiction. Ames has also taught at The Thacher School in Ojai, California and at Stanford University.
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