Daniel Aureliano Newman

I am Associate Professor (Teaching Stream) in the Department of English, as well as the Director of Graduate Writing Support in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

My teaching focuses primarily on scholarly writing across the Faculty of Arts & Science, including English. Working with graduate students, I run clinics and roundtables on writing strategies and skills. I also lead writing groups and camps designed to help graduate students begin, continue and finish their dissertations, articles, proposals and other documents. In the Department of English, I teach mainly narrative theory and twentieth- and twenty-first century literature.
 
My research specializes in narratology, Literature & Science Studies, and modern and contemporary British and Irish fiction, though I have also published on American, French and Canadian literature, on Shakespeare, and on science communication. I am particularly interested in theorizing and interpreting texts that explore or exist at or beyond the limits of narrativity, such as "plotless fiction," certain scientific models, statistics, and argumentative prose. I also run the monthly Narratology Lab.
 
In Writing Studies, I am especially interested in the social aspects of scholarly writing and on strategies for giving better feedback on graduate writing. I am particularly interested in publishing works on writing and Communities of Practice with graduate students from various fields, using co-authorship as a way to help graduate students navigated the “hidden curriculum” and (of course) bolster their publication record.

Office Hours

By Appointment

Publications

Books

Modernist Life Histories: Biological Theory and the Experimental Bildungsroman, Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Edited Collections and Special Issues

Writing Together: Building Social Writing Opportunities for Graduate Studies, University of Michigan Press, eds. Rachael Cayley, Fiona Coll and Daniel Aureliano Newman. (forthcoming 2025)

“Narratologies of Science,” special issue of Journal of Narrative Theory 53.2 (2023), ed. Daniel Aureliano Newman.

Articles and Chapters

“Collegiality as Core Value in Dissertation Feedback Groups” (co-authored with Anna Butler-Koo, Andrew Chang, Laila Khoshkar, Nat Leduc, Yang Liu, Joe McLaughlin, Rhiannon Vogl and Taylor Bryanne Woodcock). Being Well while Writing: Reimagining Values for Graduate Student Writing Support, ed. Katharine Brown and Christopher Basgier (forthcoming 2027).

“Feedback Loops: The Humanizing Art of Guiding Grad-Student Writing in the Sciences.” Humanizing Science Education: A Collection of Reflective Essays and Creative Works from Science Educators and Learners, eds Naowarat Cheeptham & Carolyn Ives. University of Toronto Press (forthcoming 2026).

“Responding to Writing as Pedagogy and Professional Development in Doctoral Dissertation Working Groups” (co-authored with Bowen Chan, Anne-Marie Fowler, Rachel Giles, Sarah Howden, Chandra Murdoch, Raheleh Saryazdi, Robert Twiss and Rhiannon Vogl). Responding to Writing: A Practical Sourcebook for Instructors, ed. Dana Ferris et al, University of Michigan Press (forthcoming 2026).

“From Fi-Sci Pattern Mapping to Literary Interpretation: The Whodunit Plot and Quantum Superposition in David Lodge’s Thinks…” Style 59.3 (2025): 311-335.

“Pop Goes the Storyworld: Popular Songs for Teaching Narrative Theory.” The Crossroads of Music and Literature: New Essays on the Muse of Song, edited by Kelly Baron and Andrew DuBois. Bloomsbury, 2025, pp. 209-226.

Newman, Daniel Aureliano (translator) “Tensions and Resolutions: Plot’s Musicality, or Musical Plot?” by Raphaël Baroni. Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 14.1 (2022 [backdated, published 2025]): 35–54.

“Science Storytelling beyond the Dramatic Arc: Narrativity and Little Red Schoolhouse Principles in Science Communication.” Journal for the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning 28 (2023): 12–23.

“Comparative Literature & Science, in the Abyss: (Meta)Fiction and Benthic Biology in Woolf, Gide, Huxley, and Brossard,” invited contribution for CompLit: Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society 1.5 (2023): 45–73.

“Grappling with the Unnarratable: Introduction to Special Issue on Narratologies of Science.” Journal of Narrative Theory 53.2 (2023): 1–11.

“Limits of Narrative Science: Unnarratability and Neonarrative in Evolutionary Biology.” Partial Answers 20.2 (2022): 331-51, special issue on The Limits of Narrative, eds Samuli Björninen and Merja Polvinen.

“Beyond the Search Image: Reading as (Re)Search.” Modernism, Theory and Responsible Reading, ed. Stephen Ross, pp. 93-109. Bloomsbury, 2021.

"From ‘Flowery Expression' to Floral Motif: Adapting Discordant Narration in Sarah Polley's Away from Her." Ekphrasis: Images, Cinema, Theory, Media 22.2 (2019): 54-72.

"Narrative: Common Ground in Literature and Science Studies?" Configurations 26.3 (2018): 277-82, special joint issue with Journal of Literature and Science on "The State of the Unions II"

"Your Body Is Our Black Box: Narrating Nations in Second-Person Fiction by Edna O'Brien and Jennifer Egan." Frontiers of Narrative Studies 5.1 (2018): 42-65, special issue on Narrative Theory and Experimental Fiction, ed. Brian Richardson.

"Nabokov's Gradual and Dual Blues: Unreliability, Taxonomy, and Ethics in Lolita." Journal of Narrative Theory 48.1 (2018): 54-84.

"Terms of Art in Law and Herbals." Shakespeare's Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools. Edited by Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Mark Kaethler & Janelle Jenstad 47-65. New York: Routledge, 2018.

"Plot Counter Plot: Genetics and Generic Strain in the Modernist Novel of Formation." Intervalla: Platform for Intellectual Exchange 4 (2016): 30-69.

"‘Education of an Amphibian': Anachrony, Neoteny and Bildung in Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza." Twentieth Century Literature 62.4 (2016): 403-28.

“Heredity, Kin Selection and the Fate of Characters in E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey.” Fact and Fiction: Literature and Science in the German and European Context. Edited by Christine Lehleiter, 247-71. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2016.  

"A Source for ‘The Most Profound Sentence' in A Portrait of the Artist." James Joyce Quarterly 52.1 (2014): 165-68.

"Flaubertian Aesthetics, Modernist Ethics and Animal Representation in Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa." Style 47.4 (Winter 2013): 509-24.

Burkle, L.A., R.E. Irwin, & D.A. Newman. "Predicting the Effects of Nectar Robbing on Plant Reproduction: Implications of Pollen Limitation and Plant Mating System." American Journal of Botany 94 (2007): 1935-43.

Newman, D.A. & J.D. Thomson. "Interactions among Nectar Robbing, Floral Herbivory, and Ant Protection in Linaria vulgaris."Oikos 110 (2005): 497-506.

Newman, D.A. & J.D. Thomson. "Effects of Nectar Robbing on Nectar Dynamics and Bumblebee Foraging Strategies in Linaria vulgaris." Oikos 110 (2005): 309-20.