Patrick JONES
Dr Patrick JONES
Senior Research and Teaching Assistant
CO 210
+41 22 379 78 87
E-mail
Additional Information / Informations supplémentaires
Office and Office Hour / Bureau et Heure de réception
Research Interests / Recherches
I have a BA in English Language and Literature and an MA in Cultural and Critical Theory from the University of Leeds. I received my PhD in Modern English Literature from the University of Geneva in 2023.
The recipient of a “Doc.Mobility” fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, in 2019 I held visiting scholar positions at Boston College’s English Department (Spring Semester) and Yale University’s Department of Comparative Literature (Autumn Semester).
My research focuses on three main areas: the late fiction of Henry James; the bearing of literature on philosophy (particularly on phenomenologies of life and Hegelian practical philosophy); and the practice and history of literary criticism.
I have a burgeoning interest in what Thomas Ogden has recently described as “ontological psychoanalysis” as well as a longstanding passion for cinema (especially the world-disclosing masterpieces of Robert Bresson, Béla Tarr, and Douglas Sirk).
I am currently working on a monograph entitled Henry James and the Question of Living. A development of my doctoral thesis, the book explores Henry James’s representation of agency in relation to the practical philosophies of Robert B. Pippin, J.M. Bernstein, Rahel Jaeggi, and Martin Hägglund. My central claim is that James’s late style – and particularly his use of free indirect discourse – models a way of thinking about the activity of leading a life that is remarkable in its phenomenological subtlety and sophistication.
I am passionate about teaching and have led seminars on a wide range of topics, authors, and genres since arriving in Geneva in 2016. In the 2024-2025 academic year I will be teaching classes on the history of close reading (advanced undergraduate); Stanley Cavell’s writings on literature (graduate); and on Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era (advanced undergraduate). I will also lead a practical workshop for first-year students on textual analysis as part of the team-taught “Introduction to the Study of Literature” module.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
‘Strange Distance: Bergson and Symbolism’, TRANS– Revue de littérature Générale et comparée, 25.1 (2021). [https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.5909].
‘Milly Theale and the Question of “Living”’, The Henry James Review, 45.1 (2024). [https://doi.org/10.1353/hjr.2024.a918116].
‘Henry James and the Phenomenology of Life’, SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature), 44. Forthcoming 2024.
Reviews
‘Jane Thrailkill, Philosophical Siblings: Varieties of Playful Experience in Alice, William, and Henry James’, The Henry James Review, 45.2 (2024). [https://doi.org/10.1353/hjr.2024.a926103].
‘The Promise of Philosophical Fiction’ (Review essay of Stuart Burrows’ Henry James and the Promise of Fiction), Cambridge Quarterly, 53.2 (2024). [https://doi.org/10.1093/camqtly/bfae015]
Conferences
‘On Not Being Made of Literature: Franz Kafka and the Logical Priority of Life’, Logic and Modern Literature, Université de Lausanne. September 2023.
‘Writing and ‘Living’ in “The Middle Years”’, Community and Communicability (Henry James Society), Doshisha University. July 2023.
‘Henry James and the Middle Ranges of Agency’, Philosophy by Other Means (CUSO), Université de Genève. Respondent: Robert B. Pippin. May 2023.
‘Henry James and the Phenomenology of Life’, Trust and Uncertainty: Perspectives from Linguistics and Literary Studies (SAUTE), Université de Fribourg. May 2023.
‘Sedgwick, Swarbrick, and Psychoanalysis’, Queer Theory and Literary Study (CUSO), Université de Lausanne. March 2023.
‘Free Indirect Style in “Proteus”’, Université de Lausanne. March 2023. Invited.
‘Henry James et la vie des écrivains’, Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France. November 2022. Invited.
‘Philosophy by Other Means? On Henry James’s Late Style’, Styling the Present: Literature and the Contemporary (CUSO), Université de Fribourg. September 2022.
‘James and Kafka on Schriftstellersein’, Modern and Contemporary Doctoral Workshop (CUSO), Université de Genève. November 2020.
‘The Strange Irregular Rhythm of Life’: “The Art of Fiction” as Lebensphilosophie’, The Sound of James: The Aural Dimension in Henry James’s Work (Henry James Society), Università degli Studi di Trieste. July 2019.
‘Critical Vitalism and the Ethics of Care’, Radical Materialisms, Boston College. April 2019.
‘The Lesson of Zola: Henry James and Creative Evolution’, Forms of Knowledge: Literature and Philosophy (OverLap), University of Edinburgh. November 2017.
‘Full Pauses: Henry James and Vitalism’, Modernist Life (British Association of Modernist Studies), University of Birmingham. June 2017.
‘Laying Bare the Ground: Milly Theale and the Question of ‘Living’’, Shifting Grounds: Literature, Culture and Spatial Phenomenologies, Universität Zürich. November 2016.
‘L’homme vu du dehors: Henry James and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’, Critical Theory and Life: Ethics, Religion, Ecology (CUSO/Northern Theory School), Université de Genève. May 2016.