Access
Publication Rights
Reproduction Restrictions
Preferred Citation
Acquisition Information
Existence and Location of Originals
Processing History
Biography
Chronology
Collection Scope and Content Summary
Collection Arrangement
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries
Title: Stanley Fish papers
Creator:
Fish, Stanley Eugene
Identifier/Call Number: MS.C.011
Physical Description:
54.6 Linear Feet
(157 boxes and 4 oversize folders) and 39.2 unprocessed linear feet
Date (inclusive): 1921-2013
Date (bulk): 1960-1998
Abstract: This collection documents Stanley Fish's professional career as a literary theorist and academic. Materials are largely textual--including
primarily drafts of his writings, publications, and clippings and photocopies for teaching and research purposes--and range
in coverage from his early student work to his most recent professional activities and publications. The collection also includes
a limited amount of correspondence, digital material, and many audio recordings, the latter of which document his activities
as a public intellectual and teacher. Although each period of Fish's career is represented in collection materials, documentation
from his time at Duke University is strongest. Materials documenting his activity as an administrator--department chair at
Johns Hopkins and Duke, executive director of Duke University Press, and dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago--are
very limited.
Language of Material:
English
.
Access
Processed components of the collection are open for research. Unprocessed additions may contain restricted materials. Please
contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives in advance to request access.
Access to original audiovisual recordings is restricted; researchers may request use copies.
Publication Rights
Property rights reside with the University of California. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their
heirs. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and University Archives.
Reproduction Restrictions
All reproduction of materials written by Jacques Derrida must be authorized by designates of his heirs. Contact Special Collections
and Archives for more information.
Preferred Citation
Stanley Fish papers. MS-C011. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.
For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this
collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.
Acquisition Information
Gift of Stanley Fish, 1998-2013. Future accruals are expected.
Existence and Location of Originals
External media received, digital object numbers MSC001_DIG001 – MSC011_DIG131
Processing History
Processed by Kurt Ozment, 2000-2002. Finding aid edited by William Landis, 2004 and Alexandra Bisio and Sara Seltzer, 2014.
Biography
Stanley Eugene Fish was born April 19, 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, receiving
his undergraduate degree in 1959. He did graduate work at Yale University, from which he received a Master's Degree in 1960
and a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in 1962. His dissertation was entitled
The Poetry of Awareness: A Reassessment of John Skelton.
Fish taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1962-1974, at Johns Hopkins University from 1974-1985, and at Duke
University from 1985-1998. He was chair of the Department of English at both Johns Hopkins (1983-1985) and Duke University
(1986-1992). In January 1999 he was appointed Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, a position in which he continues to serve as of 2003 and where he also holds a professorship in English and Criminal
Justice.
Fish is widely known for his work in a variety of areas: Milton, reader-response criticism, professionalism, political correctness,
legal theory, and literary theory more generally. Throughout his career Fish has focused on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
English literature, particularly poetry. This is the area in which Fish has taught and published the most, beginning with
his dissertation on the poet John Skelton, and continuing through his earliest book publications--including
John Skelton's Poetry (1965),
Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967),
Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth Century Literature (1972), and
The Living Temple : George Herbert and Catechizing (1978)--to his latest collection of essays,
How Milton Works (2001).
From 1980 onwards, with the publication of
Is There a Text in This Class?
The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Stanley Fish's work took a much more explicitly theoretical turn. He is frequently acknowledged as one of the founders of
reader-response criticism, a reference to his work beginning in the 1970s. The question of interpretation has been central
to his scholarly interests, from early reader-response work focusing on the text, to a more reader-centered position and the
theory of interpretive communities, to the problem of theorizing interpretation in legal studies.
Note: Much of the information in this summary of Stanley Fish's work was drawn from an article on Fish by Reed Way Dasenbrock
in
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Chronology
Missing Title
1938 |
Born April 19 in Providence, Rhode Island. |
1959 |
B.A., University of Pennsylvania. |
1960 |
M.A., Yale University. |
1962 |
Ph.D., Yale University (dissertation: The Poetry of Awareness: A Reassessment of John Skelton). |
1962-1963 |
Instructor, University of California, Berkeley. |
1963-1967 |
Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley. |
1965 |
John Skelton's Poetry (Yale University Press). |
1967 |
Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (Macmillan/St. Martin's); reprinted, with a new preface and appendix, 1971 (University
of California Press); second edition, 1997 (Harvard University Press).
|
1967 |
Visiting Associate Professor, Washington University. |
1967-1970 |
Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley. |
1969-1970 |
Guggenheim Fellowship. |
1970-1974 |
Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley. |
1971 |
Editor, Seventeenth Century Prose: Modern Essays in Criticism (Oxford University Press). |
1971 |
Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins University. |
1971 |
Visiting Professor, Linguistics Institute, State University of New York, Buffalo. |
1972 |
Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (University of California Press). |
1973-1974 |
Visiting Bing Professor of English, University of Southern California. |
1974-1978 |
Professor of English, Johns Hopkins University. |
1976-1985 |
Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland Law School. |
1978 |
The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing (University of California Press). |
1978-1985 |
William Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Humanities, Johns Hopkins University. |
1980 |
Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Harvard University Press). |
1983-1984 |
Visiting Professor, Columbia University. |
1983-1985 |
Chairman, Department of English, Johns Hopkins University. |
1985-1998 |
Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law, Duke University. |
1986-1992 |
Chairman, Department of English, Duke University. |
1989 |
Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Duke University Press). |
1989 |
Fellow, Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine. |
1993-1998 |
Executive Director, Duke University Press. |
1994 |
There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too (Oxford University Press). |
1995 |
Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Oxford University Press). |
1995 |
Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow, Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside. |
1995 |
Adjunct Professor of Law, Columbia University. |
1999 |
The Trouble with Principle (Harvard University Press). |
1999- |
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor of English and Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago. |
2001 |
How Milton Works (Harvard University Press). |
Collection Scope and Content Summary
This collection documents Stanley Fish's professional career as a literary theorist and academic. Materials are largely textual--including
primarily drafts of his writings, publications, and clippings and photocopies for teaching and research purposes--and range
in coverage from his early student work to his most recent professional activities and publications. The collection also includes
a limited amount of correspondence, digital media, and many audio recordings, the latter of which document his activities
as a public intellectual and teacher. Although each period of Fish's career is represented in collection materials, documentation
from his time at Duke University is strongest. Materials documenting his activity as an administrator--department chair at
Johns Hopkins and Duke, executive director of Duke Univeristy Press, and dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago--are
very limited.
Collection Arrangement
The collection is arranged in 8 series.
- Series 1. Biographical material, 1954-1998. 1.2 linear ft.
- Series 2. Student work, 1955-1964 . 2.6 linear ft.
- Series 3. Writings, 1941-2001. 30.5 linear ft.
- Series 4. Teaching files, 1962-1998. 2.1 linear ft.
- Series 5. Professional activities, 1971-1997. 3.3 linear ft.
- Series 6. Correspondence, 1962-1997. 1.7 linear ft.
- Series 7. Research files, 1921-circa 2000 . 16 linear ft.
- Series 8. Audio and video recordings, 1970-1997. 6.8 linear ft.
This collection also contains four unprocessed additions:
- Accession 2004.040. Unprocessed addition 2004, 1969-2003. 15 linear ft.
- Accession 2006.009. Unprocessed addition 2006, 2000-2005. 14.2 linear ft.
- Accession 2009.028. Unprocessed addition 2009, 1998-2008 (Bulk, 2006-2008). 4 linear ft.
- Accession 2014.004. Unprocessed addition 2014, 1962-2013 (Bulk, 2000-2013). 6.2 linear ft.