Education
Robbins graduated in History and Literature from Harvard College in 1971. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University in 1976 and 1980, respectively.Career
Robbins started as an assistant of Modern English Literature atResearch
Robbins's research centers on cosmopolitanism, intellectuals, the state, the public sphere, and fiction since the nineteenth century, along with political theory, Marxism, and critical social theory. His recent work includes book projects on the history of literary representations of atrocity and the connections between criticism and politics.The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below
Robbins published his first book, ''The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below'' in 1986. The book discusses regarding the presence of servants in the margins of novels that are not written for or about them. A review by Keith Embley stated that "''The Servant's Hand'' attempts to extract the political sub-text of its chosen literary material". Gerald C. Sorensen described the book as a "narrative that offers us a way of seeing", and that "in these margins of the nineteenth century realist novel something of importance is inscribed". The book was also reviewed as "a provocative and stimulating work and an exciting addition to this field of scholarly endeavor", and as "a work of innovative literary and cultural history".Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture
Robbins published his second book, ''Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture'' in 1993. The book makes a case in favor of professionalism, which was not a popular argument in the midst of the Culture Wars of the 1990s. According toUpward Mobility and the Common Good
Robbins' book, ''Upward Mobility and the Common Good'' brings the state into the subject of literature and class. The book was reviewed as "an important and committed study" and a "highly readable and enlightening book". According to Ina Habermann, "The author's ambivalence about his own argument makes it, if anything, more compelling". A review by John Brenkman stated that "Robbins's argument is not only unpersuasive but also implausible", and that "there is considerable ambivalence and conceptual uncertainty in Robbins's perspective on the welfare state".The Beneficiary
Robbins has also focused on the subjects of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. This work has resulted in a trilogy of books including ''Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress'', ''Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence'', and ''The Beneficiary''. The latter was published in 2020 and was reviewed as succeeding "brilliantly in focusing its readers on the urgencies of our time". One review states that "Robbins uncovers a hidden tradition of economic cosmopolitanism". According to Christina Lupton, "in ''The Beneficiary'', Bruce Robbins wants to make room for the note of guilt in our songs of gratitude. Who is a beneficiary? Robbins's answer is that it is probably you". She also stated that "if Robbins has his way, we'll not only still be thinking globally — we'll live in a world that makes doing so tolerable."Awards and honors
*1971 - Edward Chandler Cumming Prize, Harvard University *1985 - Rutgers Research Council Summer Fellowship, Rutgers University *1986-1987 - Fellowship for Independent Study, National Endowment for the Humanities *1992-1993 - Fellowship, Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University *1995 - Fellowship, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University *1997-1998 - Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research, Rutgers University *2006 - Mellon Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Illinois *2011-2012 - Guggenheim Foundation FellowshipBibliography
Selected books
*''The Servant's Hand: English Fiction from Below'' (1993) *''Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture'' (1993) *''Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress'' (1999) *''Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State'' (2007) *''Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence'' (2012) *''The Beneficiary'' (2017) *''Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction'' (2022)Selected articles and essays
*Robbins, B. (1998). Actually existing cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and feeling beyond the nation, 1-19. *Robbins, B. (2007, July). Cruelty is Bad: Banality and Proximity in" Never Let Me Go". In Novel: A Forum on Fiction (Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 289–302). Duke University Press. *Robbins, B. (2002). The sweatshop sublime. PMLA, 117(1), 84–97. *Rubenstein, M., Robbins, B., & Beal, S. (2015). Infrastructuralism: An Introduction. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 61(4), 575–586. *Robbins, B. (1994). Secularism, Elitism, Progress, and Other Transgressions: On Edward Said's" Voyage in". Social Text, (40), 25–37.References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robbins, Bruce Living people Harvard College alumni Harvard University alumni Columbia University faculty Rutgers University faculty 1949 births Academic staff of the University of Lausanne