
Stanford University
Department of English
Amy Tang is a doctoral candidate in English, and studies twentieth century American literature. After receiving a B.A. in English from Harvard University in 1994, she spent several years working in finance in New York, before returning to the Bay Area, where she grew up, to pursue her studies at Stanford.
Tang's dissertation Postmodern Repetitions: The Politics of Form in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Art examines the cultural politics surrounding what cultural theorist Fredric Jameson has called a “crisis of historicity” in postmodern culture, or the widespread concern that contemporary culture suffers from a profound loss of historical consciousness which in turn engenders conditions of political and social paralysis. Focusing on a number of racialized contexts in which these questions arise with particular urgency, the study closely examines contemporary literary and artistic texts that use various types of formal stasis, including repetition, spatialization, and self-reflexivity, to model, interrogate, and reconceptualize perceived moments of critical, social, and/or historical impasse.
Robert Barrick
Fellowship Administrator
rbarrick@stanford.edu
T 650.723.3054
F 650.723.1895
The Humanities Center’s fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the following individuals, foundations and divisions within Stanford: The Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate, Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe, Marta Sutton Weeks, The Mericos Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Rockefeller Foundation, as well as from Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, and the Office of the Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education.