James Dorson is currently an assistant professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, where he received his doctoral degree in 2011. He has published articles on the critical reception of “9/11”, Cormac McCarthy and the law, Edith Wharton and emotional labor, and pastoralism in the work of David Foster Wallace. His research interests include critical theory, narrative theory, the American novel, the affective turn, and science and literature. His current project deals with the relationship between American literary naturalism and the rise of managerial culture around the turn of the twentieth century.