Michael J. Beilfuss
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EDUCATION

Ph.D. English, Texas A&M University                                                                                                        2012

M.A. English, SUNY New Paltz                                                                                                                       2005

B.A. Secondary Ed/English, SUNY New Paltz
    Minors: Journalism, Religious Studies                                                                                                 2001

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Teaching:
        Assistant Professor, Missouri Southern State University                                                      2019 - Present

        Visiting Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University                                                       2013 - 2019

        Lecturer, Oklahoma State University                                                                                                 2012 - 2013

        Graduate Assistant Teacher, Texas A&M University                                                                  2006 - 2012

        Teaching Assistant, SUNY New Paltz                                                                                                    2002 - 2005

        Professional Tutor, SUNY New Paltz, Educational Opportunity Program                       2004 - 2006

Courses Taught
        American Literature I & II                                                               Critical Analysis & Writing I & II   
        American Ethnic Literature                                                           Eco-composition  
        Studies in American Literature:                                                  Introduction to Literature
                       Southern Literature                                                             Technical Writing
        College Composition I & II                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Writing, Publishing, Assessment:
        AP Reader, English Literature and Composition, Salt Lake City, UT June 2019

        AP Pilot Standard Setting, English Literature and Composition, Reston, VA, Nov – Dec 2018

       Technical Writing Course Guide, OSU Office of Individual Study, Stillwater, 2018

       AP Reader, English Literature and Composition, Kansas City, MO. June 2018
 
       Editor & Writer, OK Sierran, Sierra Club Newsletter, Oklahoma Chapter. 2015 – 2016

       Editor, “Forgive Us, Wolves: A German Soldier at the Russian Front,” memoir manuscript by Klaus J.                                       Kronenberg, 2008.

   
        Acquisitions Intern, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX. 2007 - 2008.

        Contributing Writer, Ulster Publishing, Woodstock, N.Y., 2001 – 2002

Research and Teaching Interests

American literature                                                                                     Composition & rhetoric
Environmental studies/ecocriticism                                                 Regional literature
Southern literature                                                                                      Modernism
Multi-Ethnic literature                                                                               Poetry

Book Project

Owning and Belonging: Ecopoetics and Environmental Justice

I employ a rhetorical approach to engage a number of the currents in environmental studies, particularly ecopoetics and environmental justice, and their confluence in the literature of the South. The intersection of individual and social relationships with history and nature in Southern literature provides ample opportunity to investigate the development and maintenance of environmental ethics and values. Narratives of place that include expressions of belonging and ownership can be comforting, and yet in the Southern context with its fraught history of slavery, the narratives can also be troubling and damaging. I look at how expressions of environmental ownership and belonging transcend regional foci and how they relate to understandings of proximity to, and/or distance from, the environment. The effects of proximity and distance correspond with level of enfranchisement or disenfranchisement for individuals and groups. These connections provide new ways to interpret the narratives and values generated by interactions with the environment, while also providing avenues to explore how narrative permeates natural and social borders. The book that is taking shape will include chapters that focus on William Faulkner, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Penn Warren, and Cormac McCarthy. I engage critics and philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Kenneth Burke, James Phelan, Stacy Alaimo, Greg Garrard, and Ursula K. Heise.  

Publications

Articles:
     “Rootedness and Mobility: Southern Sacrifice Zones in Ron Rash’s Serena.” Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 68, no.   
           3-4, Summer/Fall 2015, pp. 377-389.

    "Ironic Pastorals and Beautiful Swamps: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Troubled Landscapes of the American South."                 Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), vol. 22, no. 3, 2015, pp. 485-506.

    “Roberts in the Environment.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter, vol. 16, 2015, p. 4.

    “Kentucky Memories.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter, vol. 12, 2011, p. 11.

    “Exploring the Self, Exploring the Other: Inscape and Instress in The Great Meadow.” Elizabeth Madox Roberts:         Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation. H.R. Stoneback, Steven Florczyk, eds., Wind Publications, 2008. 

    “Discovering the Sacred Light of Secular Conditions: Coleridge’s Light of the Imagination in Warren’s Criticism             and Poetry.” Shawangunk Review vol. 17, 2006, pp. 38-43.

    “The Marriage of Elf and Man: Unifying Immortal and Mortal in Tolkien’s Mythology” Shawangunk Review, vol.
         16, 2005, pp. 27-31.

Reviews:
      Collared: Politics and Personalities Oregon’s Wolf Country by Aimee Lyn Eaton. South Central Review
          Forthcoming.

     Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment. By Karl Kusserow and Alan C Braddock. ISLE, vol. 27, no. 2,
         2020.

     "Appalachia Alive and Well," a Review of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash edited by Randall Wilhelm
         and Zachary Vernon. North Carolina Literary Review Online. 2019. 

      The Echo of Ice Letting Go, by Julie Hungiville LeMay, and Ghost Town Odes, by Matt Schumacher. Western  
         American Literature
, vol. 52, no. 4, 2018, pp. 475-79.

    Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper’s Son, by John O. Hodges. Journal of American
            Culture, vol. 37, no. 3, 2014, pp. 354-55.

    Learning the Valley: Excursions into the Shenandoah Valley, by John Leland. ISLE, vol. 18, no. 3, 2011, pp. 686-88. 

    Clear Cutting Eden, by Christopher Rieger. Arkansas Literary Review, vol. 1, no.1, 2011, pp. 73-77.

Encyclopedia Entries:

    Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature. Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones, McFarland,
         2013. Print


            Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums      
            Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
            Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Great Meadow and “Life and Works”
            Jean Toomer, Cane
            Robert Penn Warren, “Life and Works”

Select Conferences and Presentations

“Deep Creek Satori.” South Central Modern Language Association 74th Annual Conference, Tulsa OK, October  
     2017.

“A Blossoming Pear Tree and the Swap by the River: Pastoral, Trauma, and Mobility in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their
     Eyes Were Watching God
.” South Central Modern Language Association 74th Annual Conference, Tulsa OK,  
     October 2017.

“’True news of man down here’ The Subatomic, Subaltern, and Subterranean Sublime in Cormac McCarthy’s                    Suttree.” ASLE Eleventh Biennial Conference, Moscow, ID June 2015.


“Southern Migrations: Wilderness, Pastoral, and Urbanity in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree.” ASLE Tenth Biennial                 Conference, Lawrence, KS, May 2013.

“Environmental Justice and Justice for the Environment: The Appeals of History and Ecopoetics in John Graves’s             Goodbye to a River.”  47th Annual Conference of the Western Literature Association, Lubbock, TX, November         2012.

“Brother to Dragons: Portrait of the Poem as the Maker of the Poet.” Robert Penn Warren Circle Meeting, Bowling         Green and Guthrie, KY, April 2011.

“‘Use It Well': Progress, Reciprocal Ownership, and the Environment in Go Down, Moses." Modern Language                     Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, December 2009.

“Canned Peaches in the Waste Land: The Mystery and Ecology of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” South Atlantic             Modern Language Association 2008 Annual Conference, Louisville, KY November 2008. 

“‘Country you could walk into’: Mystical Enthymemes in Hemingway’s Early Short Stories.” 13th Biennial                             International Hemingway Society Conference, Kansas City, MO, June 2008.

“‘Honey of Life in Her Heart:’ Ecological Immersion in The Time of Man.” American Literature Association 19th             Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 2008.

“Inscape, Instress, and Matter: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Bishop Berkeley in the Writings of Elizabeth Madox                 Roberts.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association 2007 Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, November 2007.

“Outside the Circle at 38,000 Feet: Warren’s ‘Pathological Flinch,’ Attraction, Reaction, and Conversation with                     Emerson.” Robert Penn Warren Circle Meeting, Bowling Green and Guthrie, KY, April 2007.

“Self, Identity, and Knowledge: Merging the Familiar and the Strange in The Haunted Mirror.” 9th Annual                             Conference, Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, Harrodsburg and Springfield, KY, April 2007.

“Sensuality and Religion in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God.” Intersecting Identities, Graduate Student Colloquium,                 College Station, TX, February 2007.

Awards

Visiting Assistant Professor Travel Award. Department of English, Oklahoma State University. Fall 2017

Visiting Assistant Professor Travel Award. Department of English, Oklahoma State University. Spring 2015


Travel to Conference Grant. The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M University.             Spring 2010.

Certificates and Training

Diversity Workshop, Oklahoma State University, Provost's Initiative: Focus on General Education: 2014-2015

Preparing Online Instructors, Oklahoma State University, Institute for Teaching and Learning Excellence: Fall 2014.

Professional Service

Panel Chair, “Fyodor? Meet Cormac.” ASLE Eleventh Biennial Conference, Moscow, ID June 2015.

Peer Review Reader, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), 2015

Introduction to Literature Textbook Committee, Oklahoma State University, 2014-2015

Advisory Board and Peer Review Reader, Arkansas Literary Review, 2010 – 2011.          

Organizer & Panel Chair, “The Preservation of Place: Regionalism and Ecological Conservation.” South Atlantic             Modern Language Association 2010 Annual Conference, Atlanta, Ga. November 2010.

Guest Lecturer for Dr. Nicholas Lawrence, American Literature: Colonial to American Renaissance, Texas A&M             University, April 2010: “Character and the Rights of Man in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd” and “Poetry and                 Experience in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.”          

Department of English Executive Committee, Graduate Student Representative, Texas A&M University 2008 – 2009.

English Graduate Student Association, Co-President, Texas A&M University 2007-2008.

Organizer and Panel Chair, "Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Romanticism, Ecology, and Poetic Realism." American                     Literature Association 19th Annual Conference, San Francisco, Ca. May 2008.

English Graduate Student Association, Fund Raising Committee, Texas A&M University 2006 – 2007

Professional Memberships

Modern Language Association (MLA)
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)
Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL)
Robert Penn Warren Circle
Nick Adams Society
Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society
All content and images copyright Michael Beilfuss