David Sandner
Professor / English Graduate Adviser
Biography
David Sandner earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Oregon and his M.A. from San Francisco State University. His scholarly focus is the intersection of Romanticism, children's and YA literature, popular literature, and the fantastic. His recent book Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712-1831, discusses the early history of critical theory on the fantastic from the essays of Joseph Addison to Mary Shelley's influential "Introduction" to Frankenstein. Earlier books include The Fantastic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in 19th-century Children's Fantasy Literature and edited collections Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader andThe Treasury of the Fantastic. His essays have appeared in journals includingExtrapolation, Soundings, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, English Language Notes, and Mythlore and in collections including Literature Criticism: 1400-1800,Critical Insights: The Fantastic, The Best of Dissections: The Journal of Contemporary Horror, and J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances. He is a member of SFWA, the professional organization of science fiction and fantasy writers. His creative work has appeared in anthologies and magazines. He has won awards for Outstanding Scholarship and Creative Activity from CSUF in 2007, 2008, and 2011.
Degrees
2000, Ph.D., University of Oregon
1995, M.A., San Francisco State University
1988, B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz
Research Areas
Romanticism, the imagination and fantastic literature and theory.
Courses Regularly Taught
British Romanticism, children's literature, popular literature.
Publications
Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712-1831 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011)
Engages early critical definitions and defenses to assert the importance of fantastic literature to the development of the 18th- and early 19th-century discourse of the sublime.
Ed., Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004).
Comprehensive survey and assessment of criticism on the fantastic from Joseph Addison and Ann Radcliffe in the 18th century to modern critics Mikhail Bahktin and Fredric Jameson.
Ed., The Treasury of the Fantastic: Romanticism to the EarlyTwentieth Century(Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2001.)
Collection of classic fantastic works, both genre and mainstream, fiction and poetry, literature for children and for adults, from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Fantastic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-century Children’s Fantasy Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996).
Theorizes the influence of the Romantic sublime on the development and popularity of nineteenth-century children’s fantasy.
“Critical and Historical Contexts: The Emergence and Evolution of the Fantastic.”Critical Insights: The Fantastic. Ed. Claire Whitehead. (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2012)
“Meat Shots, Gorelets, Severed Hands and the Uncanny in Your Inbox: Michael Arnzen’s New Directions in Horror.” Dissections:The Journal of Contemporary Horror. Spring 2007.www.simegen.com/writers/dissections/dissections_contents_page.html. Rptd. in The Gorelets Omnibus. Ed. Michael A. Arnzen. (Bowie, MD: Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2012). Also rptd. in The Best of Dissections: The Journal of Contemporary Horror. Ed. by Gina Wisker (Print edition, forthcoming, 2012.)
“Joseph Addison: The First Critic of the Fantastic.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts11.1 (Fall 2000), 52-61. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400-1800. Ed. Tom Schoenberg. Vol. 146 (Detroit: Gale, 2008).
“Supernatural Modernity in Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet and James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Extrapolation. 48.1 (Spring, 2007), 73-83.
“Between Eucatastrophe and Grace: J.R.R. Tolkien and Flannery O’Connor.”Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 89.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006), 171-98.
“Theorizing the Fantastic: On Editing Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader and the Six Stages of Fantasy Criticism.” Journal of The Fantastic in the Arts 16.4. (Winter 2006), 277-301.
“‘Joy Beyond the Walls of the World’: Entering the Secondary Realms of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles,” J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances.(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000). 133-46.
“Habituated to the Vast: Ecocriticism, The Sense of Wonder and the Wilderness of Stars.” Extrapolation 41.3 (Fall 2000), 283-97.
Office Hours
Summer 2023
Session B
To be announced
