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Books:
- Birkerts, Sven et al., Powers
Book. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo Press, 2000. (ISBN:4-622-04516-8)
Japanese collection of critical articles and excerpts on Powers's
first six novels.
- Dewey, Joseph. Understanding Richard
Powers. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
(ISBN:1570034427) An installment in the publisher's series
Understanding Contemporary American Literature.
- Burn, Stphen J. and Peter Dempsey, editors. Intersections: Essays on Richard Powers. Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press, 2008. (ISBN: 978-1-56478-508-4) A collection of seventeen critical essays on Powers, including one by Powers himself.
Table of contents:
- Stephen J. Burn and Peter Dempsey: Preface
- Stephen J. Burn: Introduction
- Part One: The Early Novels (1985-1993)
- Anca Cristofovici: "August Sander and Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance"
- Sven Birkerts: "Stepping into History: Prisoner's Dilemma"
- Scott Hermanson: "Just behind the Billboard: The Instability of Prisoner's Dilemma"
- Barry Lewis: "Thirty Two Short Paragrphas About The Gold Bug Variations"
- Patti White: "The Rhetoric of the Genetic Post Card: Writing and Reading in The Gold Bug Variations"
- Stephen J. Burn: "Richard Powers's Ghosts"
- David Cowart: "Passionate Pathography: Narrative as Pharmakon in Operation Wandering Soul"
- Part Two: The Later Novels (1995-2006)
- Jon Adams: "The Sufficiency of Code: Galatea 2.2 and the Necessity of Embodiment"
- Daniel C. Dennett: "Astride the Two Cultures: A Letter to Richard Powers, Updated"
- Paul Maliszewski: "The Business of Gain"
- Trey Strecker: "Powers World: Refuge and Reentry in Plowing the Dark"
- Joseph Dewey: "Little Knots, Tied in the Clothing of Time: The Time of Our Singing as a Dual-Time Narrative"
- Jenell Johnson: "To Find the Soul, it Is Necessary to Lose it: Neuroscience, Disability, and the Epigraph to The Echo Maker"
- Joseph Tabbi: "Afterthoughts on The Echo Maker"
- Charles B. Harris: "The Story of the Self: The Echo Maker and Neurological Realism"
- Part Three: Powers in Perspective
- Bruno Latour: "Powers of the Facsimile: A Turing Test on Science and Literature"
- Carter Scholz: "Narrating Technology"
- Richard Powers: "Making the Rounds"
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
Theses and Dissertations:
- Benshetler, Britt Annalyse.
Children, childhood, and children’s literature in Richard Powers’s
Operation Wandering Soul. Thesis (M.A.). University of South
Carolina, 2003. 42 leaves.
- Clemmen, Yves W. A.
Photographic Construct and Narrative Imagination: an Approach in
Contemporary French and American Literatures. Dissertation
(Ph.D.). Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 1994. Studies five French authors with a definite
double life between literature and the world of photography: Claude
Simon (writer and photographer), Herve Guibert (writer and
photographer), Marguerite Duras (writer and film-maker), Michel
Tournier (writer and photographer/ critic/ promoter, Anny Duperey
(actress, writer and daughter of a photographer). Also examines two
American postmodern novelists as counterpoints because of their more
deliberately playful attitude towards the material: Richard Powers and
John Hawkes.
- Coburn, James D. Richard
Powers and a Response to Postmodernism. Thesis (M.A.) Cleveland
State University, 2002. 66 leaves.
- Copeland, Anna Darden.
Synthesizing Systems: the Work of Art and of Science in the Fiction of
Richard Powers. Thesis (Ph.D.). Greensboro, NC: Univ. of North
Carolina, 1995. 204 p.
- Dragan, Richard V. Aesthetic
science and the encyclopedic novels of Joyce, Pynchon, DeLillo, and
Powers (James Joyce, Ireland, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Richard
Powers). (Ph.D.) City University of New York, 2006. 275 p. Abstract:
This study examines the relationship of science and aesthetics in the
fiction of four major novelists using a new analytic category:
aesthetic science. An introductory chapter defines this term,
situating it against traditional aesthetics and the encyclopedic
novel. Aesthetic science argues that scientific matter can be adapted
for new tropes and ideas of formal beauty. This study also speculates
on the tastes of "common readers"; who have gradually accepted
scientific ideas in fiction. [ ... ] Chapter Five looks at Powers'
magnum opus, The Gold Bug Variations, and his other novels to
demonstrate how biology, chaos theory, and other science appear in his
fiction. The role of the amateur scientist is important for
understanding this encyclopedic text. This chapter also examines how
bodies are often depicted as limited and damaged within Powers'
novels. The responses of readers from online reviews suggest that
science has become acceptable for literature. A conclusion speculates
on how aesthetic science might apply to other recent writers.
- Ericson, Gwen Rossmiller.
Contemporary cognition: Computers, consciousness, and self-definition
in cognitive science and late 20th century fiction (Richard Powers, Poul Anderson, Don DeLillo, Susan Daitch, Neal Stephenson).
Dissertation (Ph.D.) Saint Louis University, 2001.
- Fox, Matt. Exploring posthuman
development in the works of Richard Powers. Thesis (M.A.).
Anchorage, Alaska: University of Alaska Anchorage, College of Arts and
Sciences, 2004. 139 leaves.
- Garrick, LeeAnn Cooper. Exploring
Humanness In Nonhumans: The Cyborg In Contemporary Fiction
(Richard Powers, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Andy and Larry
Wachowski). Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Anchorage, 2001. 108
pp.
- Grassian, Daniel Steven.
Hybrid fictions: American literature in the Information Age. PhD,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2002. 272 p. (ISBN
0-493-77536-6). Examines American literature published in the
1990s by primarily Generation X American fiction writers (David Foster
Wallace, Richard Powers, Neal Stephenson, William Vollmann, Sherman
Alexie, Michele Serros, Douglas Coupland and Dave Eggers)
- Hermanson, Scott Douglas. The Simulation of Nature: Contemporary American Fiction In an
Environmental Context (Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, Jonathan
Franzen, Mike Davis). Dissertation (Ph.D.) University of Cincinnati,
2001. 216 pp.
- Janton, Emilie. Decoding and
Encoding In Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2. Memoire de Maîtrise
en littérature américaine, Université d'Orleans, 2001.
- Janton, Emilie. Lire l'espace
dans la fiction de Richard Powers. Memoire de DEA en
littérature américaine, Université Paris 7, Denis Diderot, Institut
Charles V, 2003.
- Karnicky, Jeffrey.
Communication Breakdown: Reading Postmodern Literature.
Pennsylvania State University, 2001. Author's description: "This study
situates postmodern literature at the intersection of literary
studies, cultural studies and the classroom. The dissertation
considers the institutional position of postmodern literary criticism
and articulates an ethics of reading around writers including Susan
Daitch, Irvine Welsh, David Foster Wallace and Richard Powers. Such an
ethics strongly links carefully considers both the ways that readers
respond to the otherness of literary texts and the ways that reading
negotiates among social contexts." Chapter Three is entitled "The Gift
of Nothing in Richard Powers." Karnicky's abstract can be found online
at
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/j/jjk10/diss%20description.htm.
- Kim, Ilgu. Limbs of life:
literature of postmodern anthropomorphic technology and cosmology.
Dissertation (Ph.D.) Texas Tech University, 2000.
- Kress, David C. Cadent
Silence: Technology, Figure, and Ethics in Contemporary Literature
(Richard Powers, Kathy Acker, Richard Brautigan, William S. Burroughs,
Russell Edson). Dissertation (Ph.D.) The Pennsylvania State
University, 2001. 306 pp.
- Kucharzewski, Jan Dominik,
Capacity for Wonder: Connections, Transitions, and Continuities in the
Novels of Richard Powers. Hausarbeit zur Erlangung des Grades Magister
Atrium der Phiosophischen Fakultät der Heinrich-Heine-Universität
Düsseldorf, May, 2004. Matrikel-Nr. 1342929. 106 pp.
- Laudadio, Nicholas Christian.
Singing machines: Musical intelligences and human instruments in
science fiction and film (Fred Wilcox, Richard Powers, Lloyd Biggle,
Jr., Stanley Kubrick). Dissertation (Ph.D.). Buffalo, NY: State
University of New York at Buffalo, 2005. 193 p. The texts under
investigation here-Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Richard
Powers's Galatea 2.2, Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s “The Tunesmith,” and Fred
Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (particularly its accompanying electronic
musical score by Bebe and Louis Barron)-all present a mechanical
entity that makes possible (through musicality) a profound connection
with its “users.” This connection tends to manifest itself as an
empathic reaction, linking the mechanical and the organic and bridging
larger evolutionary rifts in imagined futures.
- Leone, Stephen J. Cybernetics and
literature: Or, re-coding humanity (Thomas Pynchon, Stanislaw Lem,
Richard Powers). (Ph.D.) St. John's University, New York, 2006. 230
p. Abstract: This dissertation examines selected literary writers of
the past 40 years who have used the philosophical developments posed
by cybernetics to structure their fiction. Employing concepts such as
mechanical feedback, intertextuality, and metaphor-making within a
conceptual framework that tries to unite all elements of culture,
science, and writing into a single mega-project, the cyber-writers
examined in this study explore the philosophical and literary
consequences of the union of the human and the machine. Although the
writers I discuss here are not 'cybernetic engineers' in the sense of
laboratory workers, these writers are indeed practitioners of the idea
that ideas of technology have 'literary' origins in the same way that
'literature' feeds off developments in technology. In this sense, a
literary author is a cybernetic engineer: a metaphor-making animal. In
the first chapter, I give a brief overview of cybernetics and discuss
the role of metaphor and textuality in shaping this science. I then
turn to three significant literary authors of the cybernetic
revolution, Thomas Pynchon, Stanislaw Lem, and Richard Powers, to
demonstrate that the fiction of these writers employs cybernetic
principles as their structuring logic.
- Little, Michael Robert. Novel
affirmations: defending literary culture in the fiction of David
Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Richard Powers. Dissertation
(Ph.D.). Texas A&M University, 2004. (Citation
online) This dissertation studies the fictional and non-fictional
responses of David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Richard
Powers to their felt anxieties about the vitality of literature in
contemporary culture. The intangible nature of literature's social
value marks the literary as an uneasy, contested, and defensive
cultural site. At the same time, the significance of any given
cultural artifact or medium, such as television, film, radio, or
fiction, is in a continual state of flux.
- Lynch, Lisa Lillian.
American Miasmas: Epidemic Geographies in Twentieth Century American
Literature and Culture (Sinclair Lewis, Sidney Howard, Richard
Preston, Richard Powers, John Edgar Wideman). Dissertation (Ph.D.)
Rutgers The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, 2000. 276
pp.
- Marsh, Kelly Ann. The
Sensation Novel Then and Now (Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Charles Dickens, A.S. Byatt, Graham Swift, Jane Smiley, Richard
Powers). Dissertation (Ph.D.) The Pennsylvania State
University, 1997. 245 pp.
- Miklaucic, Shawn. From
Ontology to Ethics: Postmodern Fiction, Ethical Frameworks and Richard
Powers's Galatea 2.2. Thesis (M.S.) Illinois State University,
1997. 96 pp.
- Pence, Jeffrey S. Trying to
remember: technology, narrative, and memory in contemporary culture.
Dissertation (Ph.D.) Temple University, 1998. Focuses on Galatea
2.2 and on William Gass's The Tunnel.
- Rosha, Rekha. In the
counting-house of language: Accounting, capitalism, and American
identity, 1782--2000. (Ph.D.) Brandeis University, 2006. Abstract:
'In the Counting-house of Literature: Accounting, Capitalism, and
American Identity, 1782--2000' seeks to explain the role of
accounting, what Karl Marx refers to as the 'nominal shape' of
capital, in American literature. Elaborating a specifically national
explanation of mystification, Max Weber defines capitalism as an
economic system underwritten by the narrative that rationalizes
capital. From this perspective I consider the emergence and
development of American literature in the context of the concomitant
ascendance of a nationally-based account of capital as two narrative
forms that try to track events and values. Spanning the periods of
agrarianism, mercantilism, slavery, industrialism, regulatory and late
capitalism, I analyze the dense interplay between the account book and
the literary book through close readings of six texts representative
of these periods: J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, Benjamin Franklin,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, William Faulkner, and
Richard Powers. [ ... ] It is from a similar perspective that Powers
questions the prospects for repayment as American history has become,
for him, indistinguishable from its economic history. This project
revises conventional understandings of the connections between
economic and cultural formations of American identity to argue that
American literature is coined within the nation's counting-house.
- Ruberto, Charles Gregory.
Technologies of the self (Richard Powers, Neal Stephenson, David
Foster Wallace). Dissertation (Ph.D.) Harvard University, 2000.
- Sander, Mark Alan.
Phylum machinica: Narratives of anorganic life in contemporary
science, philosophy, and American fiction (William S. Burroughs,
Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers). PhD. University of California,
Los Angeles, 2003. 329 pp. Advisor: Hayles, N. Katherine.
- Snyder, Sharon Lynn. The Work
of Gender in Fictions of Science: a Study of Literary Amateurs in the
Novels of Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, Joan Didion and Don DeLillo.
Diss. (Ph.D.) University of Michigan, 1995. 246 p.
- Strecker, William. Ecologies
of Knowledge: Narrative Ecology in Contemporary American Fiction.
Thesis (Ph. D.) Ball State University, 2000. Discusses three works:
Gold Bug Variations, Bob Shacochis's Swimming in the Volcano, and
David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
- Thomas, J. D.
Toward a "hybrid fiction": spirituality in the novels of Richard Powers.. Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Carolina, 2006.
- Thurman, Alexander.
Simultaneous diversity: Discontinuity, entanglement, and contemporary
American fiction (Bruno Latour, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Powers,
Anthony Giddens). Dissertation (Ph.D.) New York University,
2000. 283 p.
- Zuelke, Karl William, Speaking a
Word for Nature: Representations of Nature and Culture in Four Genres
Of American Environmental Writing. Diss. (Ph.D.) University of
Cincinnati, 2003. 199 p.
Special Editions of Periodicals:
- O'Brien, John, ed. The Review of
contemporary fiction : Richard Powers, Rikki Ducornet. Normal,
IL: Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1998. 281 p. (Published as Review
of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 18, no. 3) (ISBN: 1564781925 (pbk.))
Includes the following pieces (each referenced individually in this
bibliography): "Dirtying our hands: an introduction to the fiction of
Richard Powers" by Jim Neilson; "An interview with Richard Powers" by
Jim Neilson; "Narrative Powers : Richard Powers as storyteller" by
James Hurt; "The storm of progress: Richard Powers's Three farmers" by
Greg Dawes; "Hooking the nose of the leviathan: information,
knowledge, and the mysteries of bonding in The gold bug variations" by
Joseph Dewey; "Ecologies of knowledge: the encyclopedic narratives of
Richard Powers and his contemporaries" by Trey Strecker; "'The wheel's
worst illusion": the spatial politics of Operation wandering soul" by
Ann Pancake; "The gender of genius: scientific experts and literary
amateurs in the fiction of Richard Powers" by Sharon Snyder; "'The
stereo view": politics and the role of the reader in Gain" by Charles
B. Harris; "A Richard Powers checklist." For order info see the web at
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/review/98_3.html.
- "DIE GOLD BUG VARIATIONEN: Richard
Powers, Johann Sebastian Bach und die DNA." A series of essays in
Schreibheft, Zeitschrift für Literatur. 56 (Mai 2001).
Includes the following excerpts and essays:
- Powers, Richard. "Arie: Der Ewige
Kalendar." excerpt from GBV.
- Graf, Guido. "The Finger on the
Trigger for the Years to Come: Richard Powers’ ’The Gold Bug
Variations'."
- Powers, Richard. "Kapitel IX,
Auszuge."
- Powers, Richard and Bradford Morrow.
"Das neu erfundene Buch: Ein Dialog."
- Powers, Richard. "Kapitel XXI,
Auszuge."
- Schmitt, Michael. "Richard
Powers: Ein Portrat." p. 89-92.
- Powers, Richard. "Sein und Schein:
Zur Technologie der Darstellung."
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