An Interview with Jonathan Arac

This interview with literary critic Jonathan Arac was conducted at the University of Pittsburgh on May 19, 2015. Arac, a member of the boundary 2 editorial collective since 1979, speaks at length about his life and work. Addressing the impact of theory on his career, he discusses how he came to be associated with the New Americanists, his project of a new literary history, the changes in his own writing, and his involvement with the journal boundary 2. Arac also reflects on his teaching and his directorship of the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh. The interview concludes with a conversation about the 1930s and the period's continuing relevance for the twenty-first century, Arac's recent project on the “Age of the Novel,” and the transformations in the field since he first began teaching.