Author Archives: Brian Goodman

About Brian Goodman

Brian Goodman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where he is also an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Jewish Studies and the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between literature, dissent, and human rights in the United States and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

On Arendt, Kafka, and the Uses of Misreading

This post is part of a symposium on Lyndsey Stonebridge’s Placeless People. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. “Literature is put to all kinds of political uses, public and private,” Philip Roth once observed, “but one oughtn’t confuse those uses with the hard-won reality that an author has succeeded in realizing in a work of art.” After reading Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018), I wonder if Lyndsey Stonebridge would disagree. Works of literature that deal with human rights issues are Continue reading →