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
M.A. English, SUNY New Paltz 2005
B.A. Secondary Ed/English, SUNY New Paltz
Minors: Journalism, Religious Studies 2001
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Teaching:
Visiting Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University 2013 – Present
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 Ethnic Literature Eco-composition
American Literature 1865 – Present Freshman Composition I
Critical Analysis & Writing I Freshman Composition II
Critical Analysis & Writing II Introduction to Literature
Composition and Rhetoric Technical Writing
Writing and Publishing:
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
Visiting Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University 2013 – Present
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 Ethnic Literature Eco-composition
American Literature 1865 – Present Freshman Composition I
Critical Analysis & Writing I Freshman Composition II
Critical Analysis & Writing II Introduction to Literature
Composition and Rhetoric Technical Writing
Writing and Publishing:
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
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. I argue for the crucial role that narratives play in creating, communicating, and transmitting environmental values. Narratives of place that involve expressions of ownership and belonging 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 relative effects of proximity and distance are intimately connected to the level of empowerment 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.
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. I argue for the crucial role that narratives play in creating, communicating, and transmitting environmental values. Narratives of place that involve expressions of ownership and belonging 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 relative effects of proximity and distance are intimately connected to the level of empowerment 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. 68.3-4
(Winter/Spring 2015). Print.
"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). 22.3 (2015): 485-506. Print.
“Roberts in the Environment.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter. Forthcoming.
“Kentucky Memories.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter. 12 (2011): 11. Print.
“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. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications, 2008. Print.
“Discovering the Sacred Light of Secular Conditions: Coleridge’s Light of the Imagination in Warren’s Criticism and Poetry.” Shawangunk Review 17 (2006): 38-43. Print.
“The Marriage of Elf and Man: Unifying Immortal and Mortal in Tolkien’s Mythology” Shawangunk Review 16 (2005): 27-31. Print.
Reviews:
Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash edited by Randall Wilhelm and Zachary Vernon. North Carolina
Literary Review. Forthcoming.
Collared: Politics and Personalities Oregon’s Wolf Country by Aimee Lyn Eaton. South Central Review
Forthcoming.
The Echo of Ice Letting Go, by Julie Hungiville LeMay, and Ghost Town Odes, by Matt Schumacher.
Western American Literature. 52.4 (2018): 475-79. Print.
Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper’s Son, by John O. Hodges. Journal of American Culture. 37.3 (2014): 354-355. Print.
Learning the Valley: Excursions into the Shenandoah Valley, by John Leland. ISLE. 18.3 (2011): 686-688. Print.
Clear Cutting Eden, by Christopher Rieger. Arkansas Literary Review 1.1 (2011): 73-77. Web. 1 July 2011.
Encyclopedia Entries:
Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature. Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones. Jefferson, N.C.: 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”
“Rootedness and Mobility: Southern Sacrifice Zones in Ron Rash’s Serena.” Mississippi Quarterly. 68.3-4
(Winter/Spring 2015). Print.
"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). 22.3 (2015): 485-506. Print.
“Roberts in the Environment.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter. Forthcoming.
“Kentucky Memories.” The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society Newsletter. 12 (2011): 11. Print.
“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. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications, 2008. Print.
“Discovering the Sacred Light of Secular Conditions: Coleridge’s Light of the Imagination in Warren’s Criticism and Poetry.” Shawangunk Review 17 (2006): 38-43. Print.
“The Marriage of Elf and Man: Unifying Immortal and Mortal in Tolkien’s Mythology” Shawangunk Review 16 (2005): 27-31. Print.
Reviews:
Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash edited by Randall Wilhelm and Zachary Vernon. North Carolina
Literary Review. Forthcoming.
Collared: Politics and Personalities Oregon’s Wolf Country by Aimee Lyn Eaton. South Central Review
Forthcoming.
The Echo of Ice Letting Go, by Julie Hungiville LeMay, and Ghost Town Odes, by Matt Schumacher.
Western American Literature. 52.4 (2018): 475-79. Print.
Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper’s Son, by John O. Hodges. Journal of American Culture. 37.3 (2014): 354-355. Print.
Learning the Valley: Excursions into the Shenandoah Valley, by John Leland. ISLE. 18.3 (2011): 686-688. Print.
Clear Cutting Eden, by Christopher Rieger. Arkansas Literary Review 1.1 (2011): 73-77. Web. 1 July 2011.
Encyclopedia Entries:
Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature. Eds. Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones. Jefferson, N.C.: 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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