Ian Afflerbach, Ph.D.

Ian Afflerbach is an Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of North Georgia. He teaches and researches modern American fiction, African American Literature, political theory, pulp periodicals, and the history of ideas. His first book, Making Liberalism New, examines the rise and fall of liberalism in the U.S. through major American fiction. His current book project, "Sellouts! The History of an American Insult" examines the figure of the "sellout" in American culture, exploring the forms of betrayal or misrepresentation that have cause so many communities to accuse one of their own of "selling out." His articles have appeared in PMLA, Novel, ELH, Modernism/modernity, Studies in the Novel, Modern Fiction Studies, and more.

• Ph.D., English, University of California, Davis, 2016
• B.A., English and Political Science, Wake Forest University, 2009

Books

Making Liberalism New: American Intellectuals, Modern Literature, and the Rewriting of a Political Tradition. Johns Hopkins UP, 2021. Finalist, Modernist Studies Association First Book Prize. Reviews: American Literary History, The Modernist Review; The New Rambler. Russian translation by ASP, for the Contemporary American Studies Series, forthcoming.

“Sellouts! The History of an American Insult” [monograph under review]

Bad Art, co-editor with George P. Thomas. University of Georgia Press [forthcoming]

Journal Articles

“The Stupid and the Smug: Sinclair Lewis on America’s Last Election.” Journal of American Studies (Presidential Election Special Issue, forthcoming)

“Carl Schmitt in Outer Space: on Cixin Liu’s ‘Dark Forest’.” NOVEL 56.2 (August 2023): 163-185.

“The American Fear of Literature: Sinclair Lewis, Satire, and the Noble Prize.” Letteratura d’America Special Issue on the Nobel Prize and US Literature. 42.189 (2022): 5-26.

“On the Literary History of Selling Out: Craft, Identity and Commercial Recognition.” PMLA 137.2 (March 2022): 230-45.

“From Obama’s Presidency to Beatty’s Booker Prize: On the Notion of the ‘Racial Sellout.’” African American Review 54.3 (2021): 219-32.

“Between Periodical Studies and Intellectual History: KAPITALISTATE (1973-83) at the Dawn of Neoliberalism.” Amerikastudien /American Studies 64.3 (2019): 291-310.

“Sinclair Lewis and the Liberals Who Never Learn: Reading Politics in It Can’t Happen Here.” Studies in the Novel 51.4 (Winter 2019): 523-545

“Surveying American Late Modernism: Partisan Review and the Cultural Politics of the Questionnaire.” Modernism/modernity Print+ 4.1 (2019): https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0102

“Cocktails or Communism? Vanity Fair’s Belated Women of the 1930s.” American Periodicals 29.1 (Fall 2019): 26-42

“Liberal Use of Possession: Intellectuals, Abortion, and Tess Slesinger’s Modernism.” ELH 85.3 (Fall 2018): 803-824

“Style, Ideology, and Autonomy: Making Room for Late Modernism in the American Scene.” Literature Compass 14.10 (2017): https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12408

“Liberalism’s Blind Judgment: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Politics of Reception.” Modern Fiction Studies 61.1 (Spring 2015): 90-113

 Chapters in an Edited Volume

“The Art of Degeneration: Nazis, Naturalism, and Frank Norris.” Bad Art [forthcoming]

“Partisan Review.” Dictionnaire mondial des littératures prolétariennes (1917-1939) [forthcoming]

“Ralph Ellison’s Late Modernism: Tragic Liberal Shadow, or Comic Liberal Act?” Cambridge Companion to Late Modernism, edited by Claire Seiler. Cambridge UP (forthcoming 2026)

“On or about 1989.” The Routledge Companion to Politics and Literature, edited by Matthew Stratton. Routledge Publishing (2023): 236-46.

“Zeitschriften und Populärkultur Science Fiction Pulps” (Periodicals and Popular Culture: Science Fiction Pulps.) Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung (The State of Magazine Studies) Transcript Publishing: Bielefeld, Germany (2022): 303-15.

“Partisan Review.” The Routledge Companion to the Literary Magazine. London: Routledge (2022): 364-74.

 “Contemporary Reception.” Richard Wright in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (2021): 318-28

Public-Facing Writing

“Fans Celebrate Ten Years of Horror with The Magnus Archives” The Podcast Review, March 2026

“How ‘Selling Your Soul’ Went Secular.” The Bias Magazine. Dec. 16, 2024.

“How Organized Labor Shames its Traitors: The Story of the Scab.” The Conversation Aug. 23, 2024

“B-Sides: George Schuyler’s Black Empire.” Public Books May 1, 2024

“Sellout! How political corruption shaped an American insult.” The Conversation January 11, 2024. Republished by Yahoo News, The Telegraph, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others.