Associate Professor of English and Humanities
B.A., Haverford College, M.A. & Ph.D., Brown University
About
Born and raised in Rhode Island, Derek Ettensohn received his B.A. from Haverford College before earning his Ph.D in English at Brown University. Since arriving at Sewanee in 2015, he has taught in both the English department and the Humanities program. He has also taught during the summers in the Medical and Health Humanities Institute, a collaboration between Sewanee, Centre College, and Rhodes College.
His research and teaching interests include the global Anglophone novel, literature and the environment, health humanities, and empathy and humanitarianism in fiction. His current research project explores the representation of illness and the ethics of care in the contemporary Anglophone novel.
recent courses taught
- ENGL101: Introduction to Literature and Composition
- HUMN106: The Modern World
- HUMN204: Utopias and Dystopias
- ENGL212: Studies in Literature - Literatures of 9/11
- ENGL316: The Novel in the Global Age
- ENGL368: Fictions of Empire
- ENGL399: World Literature in English
- HUMN380: Health, Illness, and the Humanities
Publications
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“Empathy and the Ethics of Care in Teju Cole’s Open City.” Narrative Empathy and the Ethics of Border-Crossing in World Literature, special issue of Journal of World Literature, edited by Arnab Dutta Roy and Shailen Mishra, vol 10. no. 3 (2025): pp.445-460.
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“Kinship in the Contemporary Queer Novel of Care.” Queer Kinship and Comparative Literature. Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference. edited by Anchit Sathi and Alice Ferrebe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, pp. 143-164.
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“Dislocating the Language of Modernity in Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 56 no 3, 2024, p. 285-301.
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“‘Why Should I Imagine Such a Thing?’: Suffering in Michael Haneke’s Amour.” Envisioning Embodiment in the Health Humanities: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature, Culture, and Media, edited by Jodi Cressman, Lisa DeTora, Jeannie Ludlow, and Nora Martin Peterson, Palgrave MacMillan, 2023, pp. 117-130.
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“Rohinton Mistry’s Vulnerable Aesthetic: Health, Illness, and the Body in Such a Long Journey”. Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 67, no. 3 (Fall 2021): 568-588. .
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“‘The Body of Human Truths’ and the Limits of Humanitarian Reading in Nuruddin Farah’s Links.” The Novel at its Limits, special issue of Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, edited by Thom Dancer and Chris Holmes, vol. 62. no. 4 (2021): 444-458.
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“Reading Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance After 9/11.” College Literature, vol. 46. no. 3 (Summer 2019): 573-602. .
