Professor Chris Danta
Areas of expertise
- Literary Studies 4705
- British And Irish Literature 470504
- Literary Theory 470514
- Comparative And Transnational Literature 470507
- Ecocriticism 470509
Research interests
AI and literature, posthumanism, animal studies, ecocriticism, cybernetics, storytelling, the fable and evolutionary theory, comparative literature, literary theory, continental philosophy
Biography
My research operates at the intersection of literary theory, philosophy, science and theology. I call myself a literary anthropologist and am interested in how to rethink what it means to be human by drawing on other knowledge systems such as religion and science through literature.
I am currently working on an ARC Future Fellowship with the title Future Fables: Literature, Evolution and Artificial Intelligence. This project aims to understand (1) how the post-Darwin literary imagination has shaped our current anxieties about AI and (2) how literary and scientific writers after Darwin rethink the future of the human species by imagining the co-evolution of humans, animals and machines.
My second book Animal Fables after Darwin: Literature, Speciesism and Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, 2018) demonstrates how the rise of the biological sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century provided literary writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, T. F. Powys, David Garnett, Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee with new material for the fable, new ways to exploit the grotesque comparison of human and ape. After Darwin, the book claims, certain writers turn to the beast fable to problematise traditional philosophical and theological conceptions of the human and to rethink the human predominantly in relation to its biological milieu.
My first book Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot (Bloomsbury, 2011) examines how Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot critique the biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 by taking a literary approach to it.
My articles have appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as New Literary History, SubStance, Angelaki, Textual Practice, Literature and Theology and Modernism/modernity.
After doing a BA at ANU, I received honours in English at the University of Melbourne and completed my PhD in Comparative Literature at Monash University. I was an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow (2009-11) and am currently an ARC Future Fellow (2021-24).
Researcher's projects
ARC Future Fellowship (2021-24): Future Fables: Literature, Evolution and Artificial Intelligence
Past student projects
George Damalas, MRes (UNSW): The Sonic Animal in Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (2015)
Amy Parish, PhD (UNSW): Strange Intimacies: Autre-biography, Failure and the Body in J. M. Coetzee and Paul Auster (2017)
Donald Johnston (joint with Paul Patton), PhD (UNSW): What Can a Body Do? Deleuze, Health and the Elaboration of a Postcolonial Symptomatological Methodology (2019)
Isabelle Wentworh, PhD (UNSW): Catching Time: the Synchrony of Minds, Bodies and Objects in Literature" (2019)
Robin Hemley (joint with Anne Brewster), PhD (UNSW): Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Fake, Faux, and Speculative Memoirs (2020)
Emma Armstrong, PhD (UNSW): Speculative Ecologies: Science Fiction and the Anthropocene Imagination (2021)
George Damalas, PhD (UNSW): Snake Charmers: Reading the Snake in Keats, Dickinson, Valéry and Lawrence (2023)
Publications
- Danta, C 2024, 'The Blue Fox: Cryptic Storytelling and Nonhuman Mimicry in the Work of Sjon and Jeff VanderMeer', Contemporary Literature, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 465-499. Open access: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/52009
- Danta, C 2023, '"I Don't Want To Put My Toys Away": H. G. Wells, Gameplaying, and the Narrative Floor', Journal of Juvenilia Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 106-121. Open access: https://journalofjuveniliastudies.com/index.php/jjs/article/view/88/109
- Danta, C 2023, 'J.M. Coetzee and the Aesthetics of Disgust', Angelaki, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 3-19. Open access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0969725X.2023.2270353
- Danta, C 2022, 'Earthbound in the Anthropocene', Derrida Today, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 87-92.
- Danta, C 2021, 'Panpsychism and speculative evolutionary aesthetics in Samuel Butler's 'The Book of the Machines'', Textual Practice, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 285-304.
- Danta, C 2021, 'Scaling Down Our Imagination of the Human: Ted Chiang and the Fable of Extinction', in Stuart Cooke, Peter Denney (ed.), Transcultural Ecocriticism: Global, Romantic and Decolonial Perspectives, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 41-62.
- Danta, C 2018, Animal Fables after Darwin: Literature, Speciesism, and Metaphor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Danta, C 2018, 'Eurydice's curse: J.M. Coetzee and the prospect of death', Australian Literary Studies, vol. 33, no. 1.
- Danta, C 2018, 'The Theology of Personification: Allegory and Nonhuman Agency in the Work of T. F. Powys', Modernism/Modernity, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 709-728.
- Danta, C 2015, 'Acrobats and ascetics: Peter Sloterdijk and the aesthetics of verticality', European Journal of English Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 66-80.
- Chrulew, M & Danta, C 2014, 'Introduction: Fabled Thought: On Jacques Derrida's The Beast & the Sovereign', Sub-Stance, vol. 43, no. 134, pp. 3-9.
- Chrulew, M & Danta, C, eds, 2014, Fabled thought: On Jacques Derrida's The Beast & the Sovereign. Sub-Stance, vol. 41, no. 134.
- Danta, C & Groth, H 2014, 'Introduction: Between Minds', in Chris Danta, Helen Groth (ed.), Mindful Aesthetics: Literature and the Science of Mind, New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 1-14.
- Danta, C & Groth, H, eds, 2014, Mindful Aesthetics: Literature and the Science of Mind, New York: Bloomsbury.
- Danta, C 2014, '"Might sovereignty be devouring?" Derrida and the fable', Sub-Stance, vol. 43, no. 134, pp. 37-49.
- Danta, C 2013, 'Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and Garnett', in Brendan Moran, Carlo Salzani (ed.), Philosophy and Kafka, Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 123-140.
- Danta, C 2013, 'Derrida and the test of secrecy', Angelaki, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 61-75.
- Danta, C 2013, 'The New Solitude: Melancholy Anthropomorphism and the Molecular Gaze', English Studies in Canada, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 71-86.
- Danta, C 2012, '"The cold illucid world": The Poetics of Gray in Cormac McCarthy's The Road', in Julian Murphet, Mark Steven (ed.), Styles of Extinction: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 9-27.
- Danta, C 2012, 'The future will have been animal: Dr Moreau and the aesthetics of monstrosity', Textual Practice, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 687-705.
- Danta, C 2011, Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot, New York: Bloomsbury.
- Danta, C 2011, 'J.M. Coetzee: The Janus Face of Authority', in Chris Danta, Sue Kossew, Julian Murphet (ed.), Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, London: Bloomsbury, pp. xi-xx.
- Danta, C 2011, 'Revolution at a Distance: Jane Austen and Personalised History', in A.D. Cousins, Dani Napton, Stephanie Russo (ed.), The French Revolution and the British Novel in the Romantic Period, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 137-152.
- Danta, C 2011, 'The Melancholy Ape: Coetzee's Fables of Animal Finitude', in Chris Danta, Sue Kossew, Julian Murphet (ed.), Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 125-140.
- Danta, C, Kossew, S & Murphet, J, eds, 2011, Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction, London: Bloomsbury.
- Danta, C 2010, 'The Metaphysical Cut: Darwin and Stevenson on Vivisection', Victorian Review, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 51-65.
- Danta, C 2009, 'Coetzee's Animal Afterlives', Southerly, vol. 69, no. 1.
- Danta, C 2009, 'Kafka and Cultural Zionism: Dates in Palestine, and: Kafka and Photography (review)', Modernism/Modernity, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 629-631.
- Danta, C & Vardoulakis, D 2008, 'The Political Animal: Foreword', Sub-Stance, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 3-6.
- Danta, C & Vardoulakis, D, eds, 2008, The Political Animal. Sub-Stance, vol. 37, no. 3.
- Danta, C 2008, 'Kafka's Mousetrap: The fable of the dying voice', Sub-Stance, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 152-168.
- Danta, C 2008, 'Sarah's laughter: Kafka's Abraham', Modernism/Modernity, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 343-359.
- Danta, C 2008, 'The Animal Substitutes', in Finlay Lloyd (ed.), The Finlay Lloyd Book About Animals, Braidwood, NSW: Finlay Lloyd, pp. 87-97.
- Danta, C 2007, '"Like a dog... like a lamb": Becoming sacrificial animal in Kafka and Coetzee', New Literary History, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 721-737.
- Danta, C 2007, 'The Poetics of Distance: Kierkegaard's Abraham', Literature and Theology, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 160-177.
- Danta, C 2006, 'Two versions of death: the transformation of the literary corpse in Kafka and Stevenson', Textual Practice, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 281-300.
- Danta, C 2005, '"The Absolutely Dark Moment of the Plot": Blanchot's Abraham', in Leslie Hill, Brian Nelson, Dimitris Vardoulakis (ed.), After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism, Philosophy, Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 205-221.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- FT20: Future Fables: Literature, Evolution and Artificial Intelligence (Primary Investigator)
