Cassandra Falke

Cassandra Falke is a Professor of English Literature at UiT. She specializes in English romanticism and literary theory. Her books include Intersections in Christianity and Critical Theory (ed. 2010),  Literature by the Working Class: English Autobiography, 1820-1848 (2013),  The Phenomenology of Love and Reading  (2016; paperback 2018), Phenomenology of the Broken Body (co-ed 2019), Wild Romanticism (co-ed, 2021), and Interpreting Violence: Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics (co-ed 2023). In articles and book chapters, she has also written about Romantic-period literature, class, education, contemporary phenomenology and the portrayal of violence in literature.   

She is the recipient of a Fulbright professorship, two NEH awards, and a Distinguished Professor designation for teaching. She led the NOH-HS funded network,  Interpreting Violence: Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics  and is a partner in the project Instrumental Narratives: The Limits of Storytelling and New Story-Critical Narrative Theory . She also led the project ReadRespond: Literature / History / Human Rights, an international, online reading initiative encouraging discussions of rights-engaged literature. Falke was President of the American Studies Association of Norway from 2018-2022 and leads UiT's Interdisciplinary Phenomenology research group. Her current book projects are entitled Global Human Rights Fiction  (Routledge 2025),  Wise Passiveness: Being Receptive in the Romantic Period  (Bloomsbury, 2024), and The Reader as Witness: Seeing Political Violence through Contemporary Novels.