A Conversation with Scholar and Writer, Rachel Greenwald Smith

Rachel Greenwald Smith is a scholar and storyteller who seamlessly connects topics ranging from poetry to governing systems, punk music, economics, aesthetic innovations in the art and culture, motherhood, social unrest, and more. This interview delves into her new book, On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an America Idea, as well as Ms. Greenwald Smith's literary (and musical) influences, writing habits, and the craft of research and composition.
Rachel Greenwald Smith is the author of On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal (Graywolf Press, 2021) and Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Louis University, where she teaches courses at the graduate and undergraduate level on contemporary literature and critical theory. Her essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Yale Review. Her academic articles have appeared in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Post45 Peer Reviewed, American Literature, Mediations, Modern Fiction Studies, and elsewhere. She has edited two volumes of scholarship, Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture, with Mitchum Huehls (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), and American Literature in Transition: 2000-2010 (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She is the recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies Ryskamp Fellowship (2015).
Originally from Portland, Oregon, she lives in Saint Louis.