Adam Zachary Newton

Who is Adam Zachary Newton?

Adam Zachary Newton is Chair of the Department of English at Yeshiva University and the former Jane and Rowland Blumberg Centennial Professor in English at the University of Texas at Austin.

Newton is a graduate of Haverford College and has a Ph.D. from Harvard University. While at Harvard, his book, Narrative ethics, "sought a bridge between the disciplines of ethical philosophy and literary studies by proposing a new way to think about the moral realms of risk and responsibility as problems of reading." He defines narrative ethics as "the ethical consequences of narrating story... and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in that process." Other scholars apply his approach and find new ways to read old books.

Newton married Miriam Udel in 2011, who had read his book Narrative ethics twice, years before meeting him.