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"I want a History of Looking," wrote theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes in 1980. We will engage Barthes' challenge in this course by constructing our own History of Looking. From celebrity culture in the 1890's to today's social media, we'll explore the rich intersections between image and text across the twentieth century. As a class, we will practice close-reading both images and literary texts, collaboratively developing a set of analytical strategies and practices along the way. Our reading will begin with a brief survey of critical and theoretical writings by Susan Sontag, John Berger, and others. Working from this critical framework, we will apply certain key terms and concepts--from ekphrasis to punctum--to literature by such writers as Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, and Don DeLillo. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. Prerequisite: ENGL 121.
This course will focus on extensive reading of a broad selection of British authors from Romanticism to the present. Students will engage in close analysis of literary texts by such authors as Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Conrad, and Woolf, with some attention to historical and cultural contexts. Prerequisites: ENGL 201, 202, 203, or 204
This course will focus on extensive reading of a broad selection of British authors from Romanticism to the present. Students will engage in close analysis of literary texts by such authors as Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Conrad, and Woolf, with some attention to historical and cultural contexts. Prerequisites: ENGL 201, 202, 203, or 204
Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.
Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.
From Ezra Pound's avant-garde experiments with the Poets' Club to Gertrude Stein's Parisian salons, modernism arose in tandem with social clubs, cliques, and coteries. Central to our study of British modernism will be the Bloomsbury Group, today known for fostering some of the era's most influential thinkers, writers, and artists. In addition to reading the work of well-known members like Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, we will also consider the group's "outsiders" in order to better understand its political and cultural complexities. Through the semester, our readings will allow us to explore the relationship between modernism and modernity--the ways in which artists and writers reacted to such cultural changes as industrialism, women's suffrage, emergent literacies, or World War I. Alongside these readings of early-twentieth-century prose and poetry, we will survey contemporary literary criticism, focusing on two recent shifts in the discipline: the emergence of "the new modernist studies" (Mao & Walkowitz) and new initiatives in the digital humanities. Finally, because Bloomsbury's members ranged widely in their intellectual and artistic commitments, this course will take an interdisciplinary approach to modernism, tracing pivotal experiments across and between the arts. We will examine, for instance, Roger Fry's pioneering work with the Post-Impressionist Exhibits of 1910 and 1912 and the collaborations between the riotous 1913 premiere of THE RITE OF SPRING. Writers may include E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, H.D., T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley, and Mulk Raj Anand. This course counts both as elective credit and as a 600-level seminar. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor and degree-seeking status.
Academic History
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Washington At St. Thomas since 2012
Expertise/Specialties
Modernism and modernity 19th- and 20th-century British literature and culture Literature and other arts (especially photography and visual culture) Print/media history Literature and medicine
Selected Awards/Fellowships
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers: "James Joyce's Ulysses: Texts and Contexts." Dublin, Ireland. June 18-July 20, 2012.
Faculty Teaching Award for Acting Instructor. Department of English, University of Washington. 2011.
Robert B. Heilman Dissertation Prize. Department of English, University of Washington. 2010.
Joan Webber Prize for Distinguished Teaching. Department of English, University of Washington. 2009.
Dissertation Fellowship. The Graduate School, University of Washington. 2009.
Joan Webber Prize for Distinguished Teaching. Department of English, University of Washington. 2008.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (French language study). 2005.
Selected Publications and Presentations
"Florence Farr's Modern Voice." The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. Louisville, KY. February 2013.
"The Young Poet's Modern Pastoral." Modernist Studies Association Conference. Las Vegas, NV. October 2012.
"Virginia Woolf and the Child Poet." Modernist Cultures 7.2 (2012): 279-305.
“Aldous Huxley and the Art of Seeing.” Modernist Studies Association Conference. Buffalo, NY. October 2011.
“Woolf and the Victorian Child.” Modern Language Association Convention. Los Angeles, CA. January 2011.
“Aldous Huxley and the Hazards of Writing.” Modern Language Association Convention. Los Angeles, CA. January 2011.
“Virginia Woolf and the Allure of the Child-Poet.” Modernist Studies Association Conference. Montreal, QC. November 2009.
“The Aesthetics of ‘Squeak and Gibber’: Aphasia in Huxley’s Early Novels.” Modernist Studies Association Conference. Nashville, TN. November 2008.
“A Modern Amphion: How Ezra Pound Conjured Ancient Elegy With Music.” Modern Language Association Convention. Chicago, IL. December 2007.
“The Articulated Body: Prosthetics, Hardened Bodies, and Urbanity in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Conference. Victoria, BC, Canada. October 2007.
“Translator as Paramour: The Shifting Role of Translation in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.” International Virginia Woolf Conference. Miami, OH. June 2007.
