I was born in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up in nearby Cranston. I graduated from Brown University in 1979 and took my Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard in 1988 with a dissertation on the novels of Thomas Pynchon. Since 1990 I have taught in the Department of Literature at Claremont McKenna College.
My scholarly interests center upon modern literature and culture, literature and philosophy, and literary theory. You can contact me at jfarrell@cmc.edu.