James Phelan
James Phelan is Distinguished University Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where he is also Director of Medical Humanities and Director of Project Narrative. Phelan teaches and writes about narrative theory, the medical humanities, the English and American novel, especially from modernism to the present, and nonfiction narrative.
He has authored or co-authored over ten books鈥攊ncluding Worlds from Words (1981), Narrative as Rhetoric (1996), Living to Tell About It (2005), and Somebody Telling Somebody Else (2017)鈥攁s well many essays exploring narrative structure, voice, and fictionality. He edited the journal Narrative from 1992 through 2025 and continues to co-edit the Ohio State University Press book series The Theory and Interpretation of Narrative.
His honors include OSU鈥檚 Distinguished Scholar Award and Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award, membership in the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Narrative He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.