Wesley Moore, M.A.

Dissertation Project: “Blurring Boundaries: Virtual Structures and the Role of Art and Literature in the Work of Jennifer Egan, Ben Lerner, and Ruth Ozeki”

In my PhD, I explore how twenty-first century US literature concerns itself with new media technologies, neoliberal structures, and their effects on the individual and societies. Foregrounding the fiction of Jennifer Egan, Ben Lerner, and Ruth Ozeki, I investigate how contemporary novels explore the boundaries between digital and material spaces through their thematic and aesthetic depictions of communications technologies, while also labeling the space of reading as a collaborative process between author and reader. I argue the works position themselves (and the arts, more generally) as necessary counterpoints to rising global illiberalism and the accelerating attention economy