Annjeanette Wiese

  • Associate Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies
  • Teaching Associate Professor
  • HUMANITIES

Annjeanette Wiese (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) is Associate Chair/Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Humanities Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has published articles on experimental fiction and narrative in various contexts, including College Literature, Journal of Narrative Theory, Prose Studies, Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Narrative, and Style. Her book Narrative Truthiness: The Logic of Complex Truth in Hybrid (Non)Fiction was published as a part of the University of Nebraska Press’s Frontiers of Narrative Series in fall 2021.  She is currently finishing up a book project provisionally titled, Toward a More Inclusive Narratology: Rethinking Mimesis, Experience, and the Lessons We Can Learn from Contemporary Narratives.

Teaching Interests

Narrative theory, experimental literature, the rhetorical and formal differences between nonfiction and fiction, narrative in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Courses

  • HUMN 1001: Forms of Narrative: An Introduction to Humanities
  • HUMN 2000: Methods and Approaches to Humanities
  • HUMN 3210: Narrative
  • HUMN 3500: Literatures of Consciousness
  • HUMN 3666: Critical Futures: Theorizing Climate Change
  • HUMN 4170: Fiction and Reality

Major Works in Progress

  • Toward a More Inclusive Narratology: Rethinking Mimesis, Experience, and the Lessons We Can Learn from Contemporary Narratives (manuscript in progress)

Publications

  • “Impossible Identities: An Exploration of Character and Storyworld in Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown,” Special Issue, “Unnatural Narratives in 21st-century Fiction,” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory (forthcoming 2025).
  • Introduction and Critical Review: Tobias Wolff Entry. Short Story Criticism, Layman Poupard Publishing (2023).
  • “Representational Intelligibility and the Confines of Framing the Self: Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House,” Style 57.2 (2023), 205-224.
  • Narrative Truthiness: The Logic of Complex Truth in Hybrid (Non)Fiction (2021, University of Nebraska Press).
  • “Replacing Omniscience: Superior Knowledge and Narratorial Access,” Narrative 29.3 (2021): 321-38.
  • “Who Says? Problematic Narration in Paul Auster’s City of Glass.” Special issue, “Experimental Literature and Narrative Theory,” ed. Brian Richardson. Frontiers of Narrative Studies 3.2 (2017): 304-318.
  • “Telling What Is True: Truthiness and Fictional Truths in Hybrid (Non)Fiction.” Prose Studies 37.1 (2015): 66-82. View article.
  • “Narrative Palimpsest: The Representation of History and Identity in Agota Kristof’s The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie.” Journal of Narrative Theory 43.2 (2013): 137-159.
  • “Rethinking Postmodern Narrativity: Narrative Construction and Identity Formation in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.”College Literature 39.3 (2012): 1-25.
  • Translation: “The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity.” [“La fin de l’écriture? Grammatologie et plasticité.”] Written by Catherine Malabou. The Legacy of Jacques Derrida. Spec. issue of The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 12:4 (2007): 431-441.
  • Translation: “Again: ‘The Wounds of the Spirit Heal, and Leave No Scars Behind.’” Written by Catherine Malabou. Keynote address delivered by C. Malabou at “Following Derrida: Legacies,” a conference presented by Mosaic at the University of Manitoba, October 2006. Published in Following Derrida: Legacies. Spec. issue of Mosaic 40:2 (2007): 27-37.

Recent Conferences & Lectures

  • '"We Can’t Both Be Me': Narrative Disruptions as Ordinary Course of Events in Kathryn Harlan’s ‘Is This You?’” 2025 ISSN International Conference on Narrative (annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of Narrative), Miami, FL, April 2025.
  • "Fictionality and Chaos: On the Unreality of Reality,” Degrees of Fictionality, the third international colloquium of SIRFF/ASIFF (Association for Studies in Fiction and Fictionality), Université Kwansei Gakuin (Hyogo, Japan; presented virtually), October 2024.
  • “Revisiting Mimesis: Toward a More Inclusive Narratology.” 2024 ISSN International Conference on Narrative, Newcastle, UK, April 2024.
  • “The Effects of Form: Rethinking Narrativity and the Lessons We Can Learn from Experiments in Narrative.” 2023 ISSN International Conference on Narrative (annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of Narrative), TWU, Dallas, TX, March 2023.
  • “Representational Intelligibility and the Confines of Framing the Self: Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.” 2022 ISSN International Conference on Narrative, University of Chichester, UK, June 2022.
  • “Impossible Identities: An Exploration of Character and Storyworld in Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown,” Impossible Fictions Conference, University of Chicago, March 2022.
  • “Rethinking the Context of Narration: Problems and Possibilities of Fictional Enunciation,” 2021 ISSN International Conference on Narrative, virtual conference, May 2021.
  • World Literature Series lecture, “William Faulkner,” hosted by the Boulder Book Store, Spring 2021. [Postponed]
  • “Mind the Gap: Omissions and the Relationship between Narrative Time and Human Experience in Woolf, McGuire, McEwan, and Jenkins,” 2020 International Conference on Narrative, Mississippi State University, New Orleans, LA, March 2020.
  • “In (Partial) Defense of Omniscience,” 2019 International Conference on Narrative, Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, May–June 2019.
  • World Literature Series lecture, “E.L. Doctorow,” hosted by the Boulder Book Store, March 2019.
  • “An Argument for Narrative Truthiness: Tim O’Brien and Using Complex Narrative to Counter Fake News,” 2018 International Conference on Narrative, McGill University, Montreal, April 2018.
  • “Conflicting Categories: Graphic Narratives and the Revision of Truth,” 2017 International Conference on Narrative, University of Kentucky, March 2017.
  • "Satire and Truth: Fake News and the Complex Nature of Narrative Truthiness," 2016 International Conference on Narrative, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, June 2016.
  • “Narrative Truthiness and the Rhetorical Context,” 2015 International Conference on Narrative, Purdue University Calumet, Chicago, IL, March 2015.
  • “Beyond Opposition: The Duality of Truth and Fiction in Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Holocaust Memoir,” International Conference on Narrative, MIT, Cambridge, MA. March 2014.
  • “Blurring Narrative Truth: Truthiness and Fictional Truths in Hybrid (Non-)Fiction,” International Conference on Narrative, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. June 2013.
  • “‘Books say: She did this because’: Julian Barnes’ _Flaubert’s Parrot_ and the Argument for a New Realism,” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 in February. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, February 2013.
  • “Contemporary Palimpsests: Telling History and Identity as Narrative in Morrison’s Beloved and Atwood’sHandmaid’s Tale,” Narrative Conference, Case Western reserve University, Cleveland, OH, April 2010.

Outreach and other work

  • Organizer of the World Literature Series lectures hosted by the Boulder Book Store
  • Honors Council representative, Humanities
  • Invited interview on myth, truth, and the Loch Ness Monster for A&S eNewsletter, 12/1/23