Professor Stephen Shapiro
Professor
Email:
FAB5.22
Humanities Building, University Road
91ӰÊÓÆƽâ°æ
Coventry CV4 7AL
About
Born and raised in New York State, my first degree was in Chemistry. After deciding that my future did not rest in refluxing organic solutions, I went to graduate school in English. During that time I studied at the Department of Cultural Studies (Birmingham University, England) and briefly researched at the Gramsci Institute in Rome. Returning to the US, I worked as a graphic designer, had some art installations exhibited, and became involved in ACT UP/NY. Destiny brought me back to the Midlands.
Before joining Warwick, I taught at Harvard University, the New School, and John Jay College for Criminal Justice (CUNY). I have also been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Saarland, Germany (1997-98). In 2008-09, I was a Royal Shakespeare Company/Capital Fellow in Creativity and Performance. In 2010, a visiting Professor at the University of California, Irvine and in 2015 back at Irvine as a University of California Humanities Research Institute fellow. During 2021-22, I was a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg. In 2024, I had a fellowship at Babeș-Bolyai University's (Romania) Academic Research Network of Excellence. I am currently a (distant) Fellow in the Lab for Analog Games and Imaginative Play at Bonn University's Forum Internationale Wissenschaft.
Research interests
the below projects are on temporary hold as I work on a critical edition, with Philip Barnard, of Charles Brockden Brown's Memoirs of Stephen Calvert (Lever Press, 2026), the first American text to highlight male-male sexuality.
I am currently working on two book projects: The Cultural Fix: Marx and the Organic Composition of Capital. This uses a reading of the bridge between the French edition of Capital 1 and the second volume of Marx's Capital, written simultaneously, to supplement British Cultural Materialism.
The second project is tentatively called The Twist: Capital, Data, and Cultures of the Intersectional Left. This argues for the entanglement of three different capitalist temporalities in the contemporary moment that is distinguished by data-driven neoliberalism, the return of unapologetic fascism, and a new intersectional left.
Other projects hovering in the background are: From Gothic to God: Horror in America (an examination of the production of American gothic, including illuminati panics and their transformation into religious revivalism in the early nineteenth century) and The Anti-Capitalist Foucault (a reading of Foucault's works of the 1970s as a supplementary history and critique of capitalism).
With Sharae Deckard and Mike Niblett, I recently published (SUNY Press, 2024). Two 2022 essay collections are (edited with Mark Storey) and (Bloomsbury, co-edited with Giulia Champion and Roxanne Douglas).
A few shorter pieces on , , and have appeared.
My research interests focus on writing and culture of the United States; Cultural Studies; literary theory; marxism, world-systems analyses; horror and the weird culture, television studies; and analog game studies. For a more complete list of publications, see . For a curated list of videos from Occupy Wall Street, see .
I have also worked as a member of (Warwick Research Collective), a group interested in moving beyond older models for literary and cultural studies. WReC published its first collective findings in (Liverpool UP 2015).
I was one of the founding co-directors of the Warwick Centre for Global Jewish StudiesLink opens in a new window and am served on the university's Race Equality Engagement group (formerly the RE Taskforce,) for 4 years, after having been part of the group that successfully applied for a Race Equality Charter Mark (Bronze). Currently, a co-chair of the Faculty of Arts EDI Committee, I also sat on the Assembly Working Party on Antisemitism and Racism (AWP). Our report can be found on the right sidebar.
Teaching and supervision
The modules that I am now teaching are:
- EN336: States of Damage: Twenty-First Century US Writing and CultureLink opens in a new window
- EN391: American Horror Story: U.S. Gothic Cultures, 1790-presentLink opens in a new window
Past modules: - EN371:
- EN213: US Writing and Culture, 1790-1920
- EN264: Explorations in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies
Introductions for CB Brown's "plague" long-fictions (for free download
-
Introduction to Ormond: Or, the Secret Witness, Charles Brockden Brown (Hackett edition)Link opens in a new window
"Antonio GramsciLink opens in a new window" - Curriculum Vitae (Jul.2025)Link opens in a new window
Selected publications
-
(with Sharae Deckard and Michael Niblett), (SUNY Press, 2024).
- (ed. with Mark Storey) (2022).
- (eds. with Giulia Champion and Roxanne Douglas) (Bloomsbury, 2022).
- , (co-edited with Liam Kennedy), UPNE-Dartmouth College Press, 2019.
- (co-edited with Sharae Deckard), Palgrave, 2019.
Best Collection Award 2019, British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS) - , (co-edited with Philip Barnard and Hilary Emmett), Oxford, 2019.
-
(co-edited with Mark Kamrath and Maureen Tuthill)
Modern Languages Association/Committee on Scholarly Edition (MLA-CSE), (Bucknell UP), 2020. - , Bloomsbury, 2017.
- , Penn State P, 2009.
- (as part of WReC - the Warwick Research Collective), Liverpool UP, 2015.
- (with Liam Kennedy), U Michigan P, 2012.
- Critical translation of (Guéry and Deleule) with Philip Barnard, Zero Books, 2014.
- , with Anne Schwan, Pluto P, 2000.
- , Pluto, 2008.
- : 4 Vol. Set (with Philip Barnard), 2008-14.
- an edition of Wollstonecraft's (with Philip Barnard), Hackett, 2013.
- (with Philip Barnard and Mark Kamrath), U of Tennessee P, 2004.
Recent Articles (from 2014)
Analog Game Studies, 14:1 (2026).
- “What the F?: A Situational Analysis (Gramsci) of the Far Right.”Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power. 16 (forthcoming 2026).
- Visualizing Revolution, Mediations forum on Philip Kaisary’sFrom Havanna to Hollywood: Slave Resistance in the Cinematic Imaginary(SUNY Press 2023).
- “Changing Skins: The Werewolf’s Media Shifts” inCambridge Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous,Anya Heise-von der Lippe and Fred Botting. 2027.
- “Horror and World-Systems Theory,”Routledge Companion to Global Horror, , , , (2027).
- “Dialogue: Teaching Religion in US Histories and Cultures (Uta Balbier, Emma Long, Stephen Shapiro and Randall J. Stephens) inTeaching American Studies in Britain: Perspectives and Possibilities, eds.Megan Hunt and Lydia Plath (Edinburgh UP, 2026), 87-99.
- “The Undead’s Capitalist World-System” in Cambridge Companion to World-Gothic, eds. Rebecca Duncan and Rebekah Cumptsy (Cambridge UP 2026, 25-43.
- “Our Zombie Legacy: The Vodou Apparatus and the Long Spiral of American Imperialism” In The Future of Zombie Studies, eds. Tim Lanzendörfer and Marlon Lieber.
- Visualizing Revolution, Mediations forum on Philip Kaisary’s From Havanna to Hollywood: Slave Resistance in the Cinematic Imaginary (SUNY Press 2023). Forthcoming.
- “Response to Alexandra Irimia: ‘Bureaucracies of Memory. Institutionalized History in Four Contemporary European Novels’” in European Centers and Peripheries in the Political Novel, Kyung-Ho Cha, Patrick Eiden-Offe, Ivana Perica, Aurore Peyroles, Johanna-Charlotte Horst, and Christoph Schaub, eds. (Caponeu Working Papers, 2025), https://www.caponeu.eu/cdp/materials/european-centers-and-peripheries-in-the-political-novel-caponeu-working-papers.
-
“No “Monsters”: A Manifesto for Contemporary Gothic, Horror, and Weird (GoHoW)” in The Gothic in Twenty-First-Century American Popular Culture, Michael Fuchs and Anna Marta Marini, eds. (Brill, 2024), 108-125.
- “The World-System of Global Gothic, Horror, and the Weird” in Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic, Rebecca Duncan, ed. (Edinburgh UP, 2023), 38-52.
-
“Zemiperiphery Matters: Immigration, Culture, and the Capitalist World-System” inWallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century, Frank Jacob, ed (Transcript Press, 2023).
-
“Literary Value, Cultural Fixes, and Commodity Chains” in Der Wert der literarischen Zirkulation/The Value of Literary Circulation, Michael Gamper, Jutta Müller-Tamm, David Wachter, and Jasmin Wrobel, eds. (J. B.Metzler, 2023), 187-202.
-
“Algorithmic Capitalism, Digital Machinofacture, and the Productive Body” (with Philip Barnard) in The Body Productive: Rethinking Capitalism, Work and the Body, Steffan Blayney, Joey Hornsby and Savannah Whaley, eds. (Bloomsbury, 2023), 203-218.
-
“Un-Noveling Brown: Liberalism and its Literary Discontents” (with Philip Barnard) in Early American Literature, 2022 (57:2), 549-554.
-
“Introduction to “Symposium on Scholarly Editing and New Charles Brockden Brown Studies” (with Elizabeth Hewitt and Karen Weyler) in Early American Literature, 2022 (57:2), 531-535.
-
“American Horror: Genre and History” (with Mark Storey) in The Cambridge Companion to American Horror, edited by Stephen Shapiro and Mark Storey (Cambridge UP), 1-11.
-
“” in “Periodizing the Present: The 2020s, the Longue Durée, & Contemporary Culture,” Treasa De Loughry and Brittany Murray, Comparative Literature and Culture, 2022 (24:1),
-
“Decolonizing the Zombie: I Walked with a Zombie’s Critique of Centrist Liberalism” in An “Other” Zombie Project: Decolonizing the Undead, Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas, and Stephen Shapiro, eds. (Bloomsbury 2023), 40-57.
-
“Decolonizing Zombie Cultural Practice: An Afterword” in An “Other” Zombie Project: Decolonizing the Undead, Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas, and Stephen Shapiro, eds. (Bloomsbury 2023), 209-214.
-
“World-Systems and Literary Studies” in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, Paul Crossthwaite, Peter Knight, and Nicky Marsh, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 196-211.
-
“Algorithmic Neoliberalism’s Bonfire of Semiotics,” American Studies/Amerikastudien, 67:1 (2022), 17-19.
-
“U²Ô-²ԴDZ¹±ð±ô¾±²Բµ Lovecraft Country,” November 2021, Post45 online cluster on “Literary Television” https://post45.org/2021/11/un-noveling-lovecraft-country/
-
“Collectivity and Crisis in the Long Twentieth Century” (co-authored as Warwick Research Collective)
MLQ 81:4 (2020), 465-89.
-
“Speculative Nostalgia and Media of the New Intersectional Left: My Favorite Thing is Monsters” in The Novel as Network: Literary Forms, Ideas, Commodities, Tim Lanzendörfer and Corinna Norrick-Rühl, eds. (Palgrave, 2020), 119-136.
-
“Woke Weird and Cultural Politics of Camp Transformation” in The American Weird: Ecologies and Geographies, Julian Greve and Florian Zappe, eds. (Bloomsbury, 2020), 55-71.
-
"Algorithmic Television in the Age of Large-Scale Customization,” Television and New Media 21:6 (2020), 658-663.
-
"Caesarism Revisited: Cultural Studies and the Question of Trumpism” in Trump’s America: Political Culture and National Identity, Liam Kennedy, ed. (Edinburgh UP, 2020), 53-71.
-
"The Cultural Fix: Capital, Genre, and the Times of American Studies” in The Fictions of American Capitalism: Working Fictions and the Economic Novel, eds. Vincent Dussol and Jacques-Henri Coste (Palgrave, 2020), 89-108.
- “Charles Brockden Brown and the Novel in the 1790s” (with Mark Kamrath and Philip Barnard) in A Companion to American Literature, Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1820, ed. Theresa Strouth Gaul, (Blackwell, 2020), 445-461.
- “Foucault, Neoliberalism, Algorithmic Governmentality, and the Loss of Liberal Culture” in Neoliberalism and Contemporary American Literature, eds. Kennedy and Shapiro, 43-72.
- “Translatability, Combined Unevenness and World Literature in Antonio Gramsci” (with Neil Lazarus), Mediations (2018), 1-35.
- “World-Culture and the Neoliberal World-System: An Introduction” (with Sharae Deckard) for Deckard and Shapiro, World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent (Palgrave, 2019), 1-48.
-
“The World-Literary System and the Atlantic: Combined and Uneven Development – an interview with Stephen Shapiro,” Atlantic Studies 16:1 (2019), 7-20.
- “Liberalism and the Early American Novel,” American Literary History (2019), 777-787.
- “The Weird’s World-system: The Long Spiral and Literary-Cultural Studies,” Paradoxa, 28 (2016), 256-277.
- “Realignment and Televisual Intellect: The Telepraxis of Class Alliances in Contemporary Subscription Television Drama” In: Class Divisions in Serial Television, Sieglinde Lemke and Wibke Schniedermann, eds. (Palgrave, 2017), 175-203.
- “The Culture of Realignment: Enlightened and ‘I can’t breathe’” In: Navigating the Transnational in Modern American Literature and Culture: Axes of Influence, Doug Haynes and Tara Stubbs, eds. (Routledge, 2017), 144-161.
- “WReC reply to respondents,” [David Damrosch (Harvard); Sarah Brouillette and DAvid Thomas (Carleton); Barbara Harlow (UT Austin); Joshua Clover (UC, Davis) and Maria Elisa Cevasco (Sao Paulo, Brazil)] forum on Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature, 2016 Comparative Literary Studies, 53:3 (2016), 535-50.
- “Homeland’s Crisis of Middle Class Transformation,” Cinema Journal, 54:4 (Summer 2015), 152-8.
- “From Capitalist to Communist Abstraction: The Pale King’s Cultural Fix,” Textual Practice, 28:7 (2014), 1249-71. Reprinted in How Abstract is It? Thinking Capital Now, Peter Nichols and Rebecca Colesworthy, eds. (Routledge, 2015).
- “Zombie Health Care” In: This Year’s Work from the Zombie Research Center, Aaron Jaffe and Ed Comentale, eds. (U of Illinois P, 2014), 193-226.
Office hours
2026-27,
Wednesday 1-2; Thursday 9-10
(click link)
Teaching
Undergraduate modules 2025-26
EN366 States of Damage: C21 Writing & CultureLink opens in a new window
EN391 American Horror Story: US Gothic Cultures, 1790-presentLink opens in a new window
Past modules currently not offered