N. Katherine Hayles

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N. Katherine Hayles (16 December 1943 - ) is a noted postmodern literary critic and theorist as well as the author of How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics which won the Rene Wellek Prize for the best book in literary theory for 1998–1999 [1]. She is currently the Hillis Professor of Literature in English and Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). [2]


Contents

[edit] Background

Hayles was born in Saint Louis, Missouri to Edward and Thelma Bruns. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1966, and her M.S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1969. She worked as a research chemist in 1966 at Xerox Corporation and as a chemical research consultant Beckman Instrument Company from 1968-1970.

Hayles then switched fields and received her M.A. in English Literature from Michigan State University in 1970, and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Rochester in 1977. She has taught at the University of Iowa, University of Missouri–Rolla, the California Institute of Technology, and Dartmouth College. Hayles joined the department of English at UCLA in 1992.

[edit] Research

N. Katherine Hayles is one of the foremost scholars of the relationship between literature and science in the late twentieth century. Her early work orchestrates the play of resonances between contemporary scientific paradigms and literature.

She is the author of Chaos Bound, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, and Writing Machines. Her most recent book is My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.

Hayles' essays and books focus upon American postmodern literature, (particularly, though not limited to, the works of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Robert Coover) as well as the area of Literature and Science. She also writes on electronic textuality, Posthumanism, Technocriticism, Electronic literature, Hypertext, and Hypertext fiction. She is particularly concerned with the parallels between scientific models and literary theories as well as in contextualizing the interactions between humans and intelligent machines.

[edit] Select bibliography

Books:

  • My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, 2005
  • Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience (ed.), 2004
  • Writing Machines, 2002
  • How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, 1999
  • Chaos and Order (ed.), 1991
  • Chaos Bound, 1990
  • The Cosmic Web, 1984

Articles:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Gale Reference Team. "N. Katherine Hayles." Contemporary Authors (Biography). Thomson Gale, 2004.

[edit] External links

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