Thomas Carl Austenfeld, Ph.D.

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

Professor of American Literature
University of Fribourg / Switzerland
Department of English
Avenue de l'Europe 20
CH-1700 Freiburg
email: thomas.austenfeld [@] unifr.ch
Tel.: (+41) 26 300 79 04
http://homeweb.unifr.ch/austenfe/pub/index.htm

 

Employment

Professor of American Literature, Université de Fribourg (Suisse), August 2006-present.

[served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, 1 July 2009 through 30 June 2011]

Professor of Language and Literature, North Georgia College & State University (now University of North Georgia) [Tenured], July 1, 2003 - July 31, 2006

Associate Professor of English and Department Head of Language & Literature, North Georgia College & State University, July 1, 2000 - June 30, 2003

Associate Professor of English [Tenured], Drury College (now Drury University), Springfield (Missouri), August 1997 - June 2000

Assistant Professor, Drury College, 1991-1997

Guest Appointment as Associate Instructor, English Language Institute, University of Utah, Summer School 1992

 

Education  

Ph. D. in English, University of Virginia, May 1991.
Dissertation: "Robert Lowell's Religious Temperament." (Director: J.C. Levenson)

M.A. in English, University of Virginia, August 1986.
Thesis: "Beyond Nostalgia: Childhood and Remembrance in John Updike's Short Fiction."

"Erstes Staatsexamen" (First State Exam) in English, Catholic Theology, and Education for Gymnasium teachers (grades 5-13), University of Münster, Germany, July 1985.

 

Publications

Books 

   

Austenfeld, Thomas, and Grzegorz Kosc (eds.). Robert Lowell in Context.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  In Press. 2024.  

Austenfeld, Thomas, and Aurélie Zurbrügg (eds.). Who Tells Your Story? SPELL 42.  Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. In Press. 2023.

Austenfeld, Thomas (ed.)  Robert Lowell in a New Century: European and American Perspectives.  Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House (an imprint of Boydell & Brewer), 2019.

Austenfeld, Thomas (ed.).  Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools: New Interpretations and Transatlantic Contexts.  Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2015.

Austenfeld, Thomas, Jens Herlth, Dimiter Daphinoff (eds.).  Terrorism and Narrative Practice.  Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011.

Austenfeld, Thomas (ed.). Critical Insights: Barbara Kingsolver.  Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010.

Austenfeld, Thomas, and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (eds.). Writing American Women. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009.

Austenfeld, Thomas (ed.). Kay Boyle for the Twenty-First Century: New Essays. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008.

Austenfeld, Thomas.  American Women Writers and the Nazis:  Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

 

Co-editor, with Veronica Alfano (Macquarie University) of the series Anglophone Lyric Poetry and Poetics (Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield).

 

 

Articles / Chapters / Bibliographies (inverse chronological order)

 

Articles and Chapters

  1. “Religion.” In: Robert Lowell in Context, eds. Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Kosc.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  In Press. 2024.  
  2. “American Sestinas: A Century of Aesthetic Paradoxes.”  Contrainte Créatrice: La Fortune Littéraire de la Sextine dans le Temps et dans l’Espace. Textes réunis par Luca Barbieri et Marion Uhlig avec la collaboration de David Moos et Pauline Quarroz. " Firenze, Edizioni del Galluzzo, per la Fondazione Enzio Franceschini, 2023, 179-197. DOI 10.36167/QSMI12PDF
  3. “Qui chante? The Lyric's Voice as Impersonation."  Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, Vol. 2: Contemporary Lyric Poetry in Transitions between Genres and Media, ed. Ralph Müller and Henrieke Stahl. IZfK 2 (2021): 135-143.  DOI:  10.25353/ubtr-izfk-ce7d-f942.
  4. "The Other Chimamanda Adichie: Beyond the Feminist Icon." Peter Weiss Jahrbuch für Literatur, Kunst und Politik im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. Vol. 29. Ed. Arnd Beise and Michael Hofmann. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2020. 213-224. 
  5. "Questions of Epic and Lyric: The Challenge of Walt Whitman." IdeAs [Online Journal of the Institut des Amériques, http://www.institutdesameriques.fr] 14 (2019), posted October 1, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4000/ideas.6618 . OPEN ACCESS.
  6. "Not for an Age? Robert Lowell’s Historical Moment." Anglia 134.4 (2016): 683-699. DOI: 10.1515/anglia-2016-0074 .  
  7. "Lowell's Dolphin: Shame, Guilt, and the Fate of Confessional Poetry."  Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives, eds. Ridvan Askin and Philipp Schweighauser. Tübingen: Narr, Francke, Attempto, 2015. 59-72. ISBN 978-3-8233-6967-7
  8. "Confess--Disclose--Proclaim: The Trope of Self-Revelation in American Poetry Since the Sixties." New Perspectives on American Poetry: From Walt Whitman to the Present, eds. Jiri Flajsar and Pavlina Flajsarova. Olomouc: Universita Palackeho v Olomouci, 2015. 53-70. ISBN 978-80-244-4762-9
  9. "The Drama of Shaping a Lyrical Moment: An Approach to the Poetry of Dana Gioia." New Pilgrimages: Selected Papers from the IAUPE Beijing Conference in 2013, eds. Li Cao and Li Jin. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2015. 244-258. ISBN 978-7-302-38569-1
  10. Austenfeld, Thomas; Reynes-Delobel, Anne. "Kay Boyle." Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature. Eds. Jackson Bryer, Richard Kopley, and Paul Lauter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. www.oxfordbibliographies.com 
  11. "Fleeing, Flying, Staying, Leaving: The Persistence of Escape in American Literature." In Fuga. Temi, Percorsi, Storie. L'Analisi Linguistica e Letteraria. Eds. Federico Bellini and Giulio Segato. Milano: Facoltà di Scienze Linguistiche e Letterature Straniere, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore 12.1-2 (2014): 69-76.   
  12. "Nobody's Nation. Multiculturalism in American Society and American Literature." Tertium Datur! Formen und Facetten interkultureller Hybridität / Formes et facettes d'hybridité interculturelle. Ed. Sabine Haupt. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2014. 23-35.   
  13. "Louise Erdrich in Company: The American Writer and Her Communities."  Critical Insights: Louise Erdrich. Ed. Jane Hafen. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2013. 68-85.
  14. "Razor's Edge: Robert Lowell Shaving." Pacific Coast Philology 47 (2012): 1-16.
  15. "Preface." Being and Becoming. Reading Arthur Miller's Focus and "The Crucible" through Giorgio Agamben. By Cinzia Minervini Jordan. Ed. Thomas Austenfeld. Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, 2012. 1-4.
  16. "Le paradoxe d'une Sudiste, femme et catholique. Une triple liberté." [Flannery O'Connor, écrivain catholique?] Pierre d'angle 17 (2011): 11-20. [Tr. Simone de Reyff. Published April, 2012].
  17. "'Poets alone are summoned as witness': Kay Boyle as Poet." The Wolf (London, UK), ed. James Byrne. Vol. 26 (2012): 91-99.
  18. "Can Terrorism be Satirized? The Case of Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy." Terrorism and Narrative Practice, eds. Thomas Austenfeld, Jens Herlth, Dimiter Daphinoff. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011. 189-199.
  19. "Pigs, Ghosts, and a Ship of Fools: Katherine Anne Porter’s Response to Totalitarian Europe."  Colloquium Helveticum 41 (2010): 35-51.
  20. "Comparison and Contrast: Discovering Family Relations." Vergleichen? / Comparer? Komparatistische Wissenschaften im Vergleich / La comparaison dans les sciences. Eds. Gilbert Casasus & Sabine Haupt. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011. 19-22.
  21. "Genre, Voice, Identity: Nonfiction Prose and the Personal Essay." Colloquium Helveticum 40 (2009): 19-35.
  22. "The Spinet and the Coffin: Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Music." Mississippi Quarterly 62:1-2 (2009): 195-212.
  23. "Looking for Academic Family: Learning and Teaching in David Levin’s Exemplary Elders and Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man." Prose Studies 31.3 (2009): 181-189.
  24. "Locked Up Underground: Kay Boyle and Prisons." Writing American Women, eds. Thomas Austenfeld and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009. 165-178.
  25. "Kay Boyle". The Literary Encyclopedia. 24 March 2009. <http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=521>
  26. "Kay Boyle." Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction. <http://www.literatureencyclopedia.com/public/> DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405192446.2011.x
  27. "La Peur dans la littérature américaine des années 1920 et 1930." La Peur et ses Miroirs. Ed. Michel Viegnes. Paris: Editions Imago, 2009. 325-345.
  28. "Why Does Daisy Die? Teaching Late 19th-Century American Literature in Switzerland." The American Literary Naturalism Newsletter 3.1-2 (2009): 7-11.
  29. "Teaching Lowell Beyond the Alps: A Multilingual Approach to Imitations." The Robert Lowell Society Newsletter 1.1 (2008): 7-9.
  30. "Dr. Schumann" [in Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools].  Student's Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman. 4 vols. New York: Facts on File/Manly, 2008. Vol. 3, 1063-1064.
  31. "A Happy Naturalist? Jeremy Bentham and the Cosmic Morality of The Octopus." Studies in American Naturalism 2.1 (Summer 2007): 33-45.
  32. "Only Sensations Remain: The Hypertrophy of the Aesthetic in Philip Roth's Everyman. " American Aesthetics, ed. Deborah Madsen (SPELL vol. 20).  Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2007. 207-221.
  33. "The Persistence of Desire (John Updike)."  Entry in  Facts on File Companion to the American Short Story, ed. Abby Werlock, 2nd. edition. New York: Facts on File, 2010. Vol II, 529.
  34. "How to Begin a New World: Dante in Walcott's Omeros." South Atlantic Review 71.3 (2006): 15-28.
  35. "German Heritage and Culture in Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club."  Great Plains Quarterly 26 (Winter 2006): 3-11. 
  36. "The Mountain Lion." The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Vol. II: 923-925.
  37. "Plagued by the Nightingale." The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Vol. III: 1045-1046.
  38. "A River Runs Through It." The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, ed. Abby H.P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Vol. III: 1108-1110.
  39. "Peter Taylor's A Summons to Memphis: Duty Ethics in the American South." Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 36.3 (2004): 231-37. 
  40. "A Brief Meditation on Pedagogy."  The Department Chair: A Resource of Academic Administrators 14.2 (2003): 24-25.
  41. "Josef Pieper’s Contemplative Assent to the World." Modern Age 42.4 (2000): 372-382.
  42. "Travellers, Not Tourists:  The Trope of Travel as Acculturation."  Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), 16-21 August, 1998, Haifa University, Israel.  ISSEI: 2001. 
  43. "Language as a Tool of Honesty: The Example of Kay Boyle."  Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), 16-21 August, 1998, Haifa University, Israel.  ISSEI: 2001.
  44. "Thomas Wolfe and Katherine Anne Porter in Germany: The Ethical Dimension of Fiction." The Thomas Wolfe Review 23.1 (1999): 11-19.
  45. "Memory, Literature, and European Politics." In: Memory, History and Critique. European Identity at the Millennium. Proceedings of the 5th International ISSEI Conference. August 1996, University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands, eds. Frank Brinkhuis & Sascha Talmor.
  46. "No Sentimental Education: An Essay on Transatlantic Cultural Identity." Reflections on Multiculturalism. Ed. Robert Eddy. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1996, 155-164
  47. "What Makes a Western Writer? The Case of Katherine Anne Porter." Southwestern American Literature 20.2 (1995): 35-42. 
  48. "The Necessary Imagination: European Authors Encounter the West." Heritage of the Great Plains 27.1 (1994): 13-18. 
  49. "Katherine Anne Porter Abroad: The Politics of Emotion." Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 26.1 (1994): 27-33. 
  50. "Rituals of Reading in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens." South Atlantic Review 58 (1993): 67-83. 
  51. "'But, come, I'll set your story to a tune': Berlioz's Interpretation of Byron's 'Childe Harold.'" Keats-Shelley Journal XXXIX (1990): 83-94.

Review Essays

  • "German Contributions to American Literary Scholarship." American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2008. Ed. David Nordloh. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. 474-489.
  • "German Contributions to American Literary Scholarship."  American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2007. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009. 474-489.
  • "German Contributions to American Literary Scholarship." American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2006. Ed. David Nordloh. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008. 471-489.
  • "German Contributions to American Literary Scholarship."  Dual chapter for publications in 2004 and 2005. American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2005. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007. 471-494.

 

Bibliographic Essays

  • Editor, "Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature, 1997." Western American Literature 32.4 (1998): 353-383.
  • Editor, "Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature, 1996." Western American Literature 31.4 (1997): 321-363.
  • Editor, "Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature, 1995." Western American Literature 30.4 (1996): 375-408.


 

 

 Book Reviews   (inverse chronological order)

 

  1. Review of Julia Nitz, Belles and Poets: Intertextuality  in the Civil War Diaries of White Southern Women (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018) in Amerikastudien / American Studies 68.1 (2023): 25-127. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/1/12.
  2. Review of Timo Müller, The African American Sonnet: A Literary History (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018) in Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 69.2 (2021): 199-201. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2021-2042.
  3. Review of Jewel Spears Brooker, T.S. Eliot’s Dialectical Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) in Anglia 137.2 (2019): 360-363. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2019-0029.
  4. Review of Barbara Korte and Frédéric Regard (eds.), Narrating "Precariousness": Modes, Media, Ethics (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014) in Anglia 134.1 (2016): 188-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2016-0019 .
  5. Review of Guerre de Troie, guerres des cultures et guerres du Golfe, by Gaël Grobéty (Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2014), in Museum Helveticum 71/2 (2014): 253.
  6. Review of Louise Erdrich: Tracks, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Plague of Doves, ed. by Deborah L. Madsen (London: Continuum, 2011), in Great Plains Quarterly 32.4 (2012): 292.
  7. Review of Janis P. Stout, Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Cather and Austin (Texas Tech UP, 2007) in Great Plains Quarterly 29.1 (2009): 79.
  8. Review of Darlene Harbour Unrue, Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist (Mississippi UP, 2005), in Great Plains Quarterly 27.4 (2007): 302-303.
  9. Review of Rüdiger Heinze, Ethics of Literary Forms in Contemporary American Literature (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005), in Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 32.2 (2007): 356-359.
  10. Review of Mary Titus, The Ambivalent Art of Katherine Anne Porter (Georgia UP, 2005), in South Atlantic Review 71.3 (2006): 133-135.
  11. Review of Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (Harvard UP, 2004), in South Atlantic Review 71.1 (2006): 141-144.
  12. Review of Catherine Paul, Poetry in the Museums of Modernism (University of Michigan Press, 2002) in South Atlantic Review  69.3-4 (2004): 123-126.
  13. "Humility and Method."  Review of Ciriaco Morón Arroyo, The Humanities in the Age of Technology (Catholic University of America Press, 2002) in Modern Age (Spring 2003): 178-181.
  14. Review of Kay Boyle, Process, ed. Sandra Spanier (University of Illinois Press, 2001) in South Atlantic Review 67.3 (2002): 99-101.
  15. Review of Alan Williamson, Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification (University Press of Virginia, 2001) in South Atlantic Review 67.2 (2002): 74-75.
  16. Review of Susan Rosowski, Birthing a Nation (University of Nebraska Press, 1999) in Resources for American Literary Study 28 (2002), 189-191.
  17. Review of Darlene Harbour Unrue (ed.), Katherine Anne Porter's Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 1996) in Resources for American Literary Study 24.2 (1998): 288-290.
  18. Review of Janis Stout, Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times (University of Virginia Press, 1995) in Rocky Mountain Review 50.1 (Spring 1996).
  19. Review of Ruth M. Alvarez and Thomas Walsh (eds.), Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine Anne Porter (University of Texas Press, 1994) in Western American Literature (May 1995).
  20. Review of Robert Brinkmeyer, Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development (Louisiana State University Press, 1993) in South Atlantic Review (May 1994).
  21. Review of Thomas Walsh, Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico (University of Texas Press, 1992) in South Atlantic Review (September 1993).
  22. Review of David Axelrod, Jerusalem of Grass (1992) and Gerrye Payne, The Year-God (1992) in Western American Literature (August 1993).
  23. Review of Roger Fanning, The Island Itself (1991) in Western American Literature (November 1992).


Occasional Writings    (inverse chronological order)

 

  1. "Der dissonante Wüstenchor."  Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (03| 2021/2022): 34-35.
  2. "Foreword." English Without Boundaries. Reading English from China to Canada. Edited by Jane Roberts and Trudi L. Darby. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. x-xi.
  3. "Memory Culture."  Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (März 2015): 27-28.
  4. Interview mit Claudia Brülhart, "Wo ist der Glamour hin?"  Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (März 2015): 10-12.
  5. "MOOCs, Museen und Kultur." Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (October 2013): 18-20.
  6. "Playing the Prodigal: Walcott's Variations on a Biblical Parable." Proceedings of the Second Edition of ELLE International Conference, Oradea, 14-15 September 2012. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, 2013. 135-142.
  7. Austenfeld, Thomas (ed. and pref.). Minervini Jordan, Cinzia. Being and Becoming. Reading Arthur Miller's Focus and "The Crucible" through Giorgio Agamben. Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt, 2012. [Epiphania / Egregia # 9]. ISBN 978-3-7245-1871-6.
  8. "Neue Strukturen an der Philosophischen Fakultät." Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (September 2009): 4-6
  9. "Ein Schwarzer im Weissen Haus?" Universitas: Magazin der Universität Freiburg (Dezember 2008): 10-11.
  10. "A Brief Meditation on Pedagogy." The Department Chair: A Resource of Academic Administrators 14.2 (2003): 24-25.
  11. "Simulating Battle, Educating for Reality: A Visit to Fort Benning, GA." The Digest: NGCSU Faculty and Staff Newsletter 11,19 (May 27, 2003): 3-4.


Conference Presentations and Public Lectures    (inverse chronological order)

 

 

1.     “Edgar Lee Masters and the Power of Pathos.”  IAUPE Conference Rome, Italy, July 11-14, 2023.

2.     "Poetry is Tuning!"  Poetry. Experience. Attention. The International Network for the Study of Lyric Conference,  Oslo, Norway, June 6, 2023.

3.      "Form and Voice: Contemporary Poets and Musical Conventions." Panel "Poetry from the Page to the Ear," organized by Thomas Austenfeld, American Literature Association Annual Conference, Boston, MA, May 26, 2023.

4.     "History, Theory, and Anglophone African Literature": Guest Lecture for Prof. Julia Straub's lecture, "Writing the 21st-Century: Perspectives on Contemporary Anglophone Literature," Fribourg, May 4, 2023.

  1.   MOVETIA visit to Boğaziçi University (Istanbul) for eight hours teaching on (1) Modernist American Poetry and (2) Toni Morrison's A Mercy, April 22-26, 2023.

6.     "Teaching Southern Literature Today." One-day workshop at the Liceo Cantonale di Mendrisio, February 17, 2023.

7.     Journée d'études, séminaire de l'Agrégation, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France, January 12, 2023. Lecture and discussion: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night.

8.     T.S. Eliot and The Waste Land: Modernism a Hundred Years Onwards." Guest lecture University of Bern, upon invitation by Prof. Thomas Claviez, April 12, 2022.

9.     “African Anglophone Literature: History, Theory, and Teaching Practice.”  One-day workshop  at the Scuola Cantonale di Commercio, Bellinzona, February 25, 2022.

10.  "Teaching Southern Literature Today: A Workshop."  Palacky University, Olomouc, November 4, 2021 (online).

11.  "A Poem and Its Voices: 'Memories of West Street and Lepke' by Robert Lowell." CUSO Workshop: “Working with Poetry” directed by Julia Straub and Gabriele Rippl, University of Fribourg, June 11, 2021.

12.  "American Sestinas: A Century of Aesthetic Paradoxes."  Presented at the conference Contrainte créatrice : la fortune littéraire de la sextine dans le temps et dans l’espace, directed by Marion Uhlig.  University of Fribourg, May 19, 2021.

13.  "Title/Abstract/Thesis: How to Prepare Your Dissertation for the Academic Market of Ideas." Guest lecture to doctoral seminar in Foreign Language Department at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, upon invitation by Prof. Francesco Rognoni, May 4, 2021 (online). 

14.  "Recent African American Women Poets: Tracy Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Claudia Rankine." Guest Lecture upon invitation by Prof. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, University of Lausanne, April 27, 2021 (online).

15.  "Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle: Expatriate Women Writers." Guest lecture upon invitation by Prof. Sandra Spanier, Pennsylvania State University, March 31, 2021 (online).

16.  “’a swamp // where graves had been. I recall’: Natasha Trethewey’s Monumental Work of Memory.” Doing Southern Studies Today conference, January 13, 2021.  Humboldt University Berlin (online).

17.  Respondent to Keynote Address by Prof. David Caplan, "On Erasure," Conference New Poetries—New Poetics?, University of Konstanz, February 14-15, 2020.

18.  "Amerikanische Literatur nach 1945: Weltmacht, Protest, Vietnam, Vielfalt."  Ringvorlesung First Came America. Volkshochschule Zürich, 5. Februar 2020.

19.  "Between Lyric and Epic: The Challenge of Walt Whitman." Guest Lecture, Universität Trier, January 22, 2020.

20.  "What Poets Do With History: Derek Walcott’s Omeros and the Battle of the Saint(e)s."  Guest Lecture, Muhlenberg Center at Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, January 14 and 15, 2020.

21.  Convocation Address: "Spots of Time and Ice Cream Sundaes."  Franklin University 50th Anniversary Convocation, September 27, 2019, at Franklin University, Sorengo (Lugano), Switzerland.

22.  "Impersonating Poems: The Lyric's Voice Between Speaker and Audience."  International Society for the Study of Lyric (INSL) Conference, Lausanne, June 4, 2019.

23.  "Life Studies at Sixty."  American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 25, 2019.

24.  "Rhetorical Appeal in Kay Boyle's Poetry: The Place of Pathos." American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 24, 2019.

25.  "Victorious Figures of Bravado: Lowell's Pathos." British Association of American Studies Conference, Brighton, April 25, 2019.

26.  "Pathos in the Poetry of Kay Boyle: Channeling Emotion in 20th-century Protest Poetry." SAAS Conference, Salamanca, April 9, 2019.

27.  "Confessional Poetry and The Cold War." American Studies Week, University of Flensburg, December 3, 2018.

28.  "Pathos: The Genre of Poetic Address." SANAS conference Lausanne, The Genres of Genre, November 2, 2018.

29.  "'To prepare a face': Faces in 20th-century Literature and Philosophy." Australian Literary Studies Association, Canberra, July 4, 2018.

30.  "American Poetry: Pleasure, Pathos, Prosody."  Invited Guest Lecture at the University of Klagenfurt. Austria.  January 10, 2018.

31.  "The Pathos of Modernist Poems."  Lecture given at a Symposium to honor Prof. Hans Bak on the occasion of his retirement, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, December 15, 2017.

32.  "A Plea for Pathos: Recovering an Essential Paradigm for the Lyric." Situating Lyric Conference, Boston University, June 7-11, 2017.

33.  "Gestures of Faith in Contemporary American Poetry." Presented at the conference Spiritual Networks: Religion in Literature and the Arts, 1700 to the Present, University of Halle-Wittenberg, May 18-10, 2017.

34.  "Self-surveillance: Conscience and Control in Dave Eggers' The Circle." Closing Presentation in the series ÜberwachungsRäume / Spaces of Surveillance, a lecture series at the University of Flensburg, Germany, January 30, 2017.

35.  "An Ecocritical Approach to Robert Lowell." American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, May 26, 2016.

36.  "South Pacific: Love, War, Orientalism, and Tolerance." Lecture on the occasion of a Swiss European Mobility visit to the Department of American Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, December 3 and 4, 2015.

37.  "Reassessing the Age of Lowell." American Studies Colloquium Series at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, Poland, November 12, 2015.

38.  "Giving 'The Age of Lowell' its Due."  American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 23, 2015.

39.  "Robert Lowell and the History of Poetic Self-Revelation."  Distinguished Professors' Lecture Series, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, March 27, 2015.

40.  "Katherine Anne Porter and the Problem of Europe."  Guest lecture as part of the SEFOC program, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, March 19, 2015.

41.  "Robert Lowell and the Age of Identitarian Poetry."  Guest lecture, University of Uppsala, February 18, 2015.

42.  "American Poetry: History, Developments, How and Why to Teach it."  Continuing Education Workshop to the English Teachers of the Kantonsschule Baden, March 5, 2015.

43.  "'to braid her hair for the journey home': Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah." Guest lecture in Professor Hans Bak's class on North American Fiction, Radboud University Nijmegen, December 4, 2014.

44.  "Bibliography in a Digital Age: (Re)covering Kay Boyle." Faculty Colloquium talk, English Department, Radboud University Nijmegen, December 4, 2014.

45.  "Lowell's Dolphin: Shame, Guilt, and the Fate of Confessional Poetry." SANAS conference, Basel, November 21-22, 2014.

46.  "Confess--disclose--proclaim: The Trope of Self-revelation in American Poetry Since the Sixties." SEFOC Conference at Palacky University, Olomouc, October 17, 2014.

47.  "Kay Boyle Scholarship: Trends and Opportunities." American Literature Association Conference, Washington, DC, May 22, 2014.

48.  "Catholicism in the United States: History, religious practice, social place." Guest Lecture in the Dept. of Sociology, University of Fribourg, October 17, 2013.

49.  "Memoir, not Autobiography: Lowell's Self-Articulation Reexamined." A presentation in two forms. Thirty minute-version: Editorial Institute, Boston University, October 30, 2013. Twenty-minute-version: PAMLA Conference, San Diego, November 2, 2013.

50.  "The Drama of Staging a Lyrical Moment: An Introduction to the Work of Dana Gioia." 2013 Triennial Conference of IAUPE, The International Association of Professors of English, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, July 16-20, 2013.

51.  "Occasional Poets: Kay Boyle and Katherine Anne Porter." Alternative Modernisms Conference, Cardiff University, May 16-17, 2013.

52.  "Transposing the Key: Tracking the Confessional Voice from Poetry to Memoir and Beyond."  The Poetics and Politics of Crossing in the U.S.: 11th Conference of the Spanish Association of American Studies, University of  La Laguna, Tenerife, March 20-22, 2013.

53.  Keynote Lecture: "Fleeing, Flying, Staying, Leaving: Escape and Ecology in American Literature." Conference In Fuga, Catholic University of Milano, Italy, March 1, 2013.

54.  ERASMUS visit to the University of Salamanca, February 20-22, 2013.  Presentation to graduate students and faculty: "Library and Database Research Using Remote Catalogues."

55.  ERASMUS visit to Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France, December 6-7, 2012. Presentations: (a) "American Pastoral: Intertextuality and 'the past undetonated'" to a class of Agrégation students. (b) "A Question of Voice: Lowell, Didion, and literary history" to LERMA, Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone, at Aix-en-Provence.

56.  "Foer the Love of Schulz! An Archaeological Reading of Tree of Codes." In Search of the Lost Original: Comparative Perspectives on Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). Conference at the University of Fribourg, November 30, 2012.

57.  ERASMUS visit to University of Rome "Tor Vergata," Rome, Italy, November 22-23, 2012. Presentations: (a) "Emily Dickinson: Context, Scholarship, Philology." (b) "Library and Database Research Using Remote Catalogues."

58.  Guest Lecture / guest instructor: "Love Medicine as part of contemporary American Literature." Radboud University Nijmegen, October 17, 2012.

59.  Keynote Lecture: "Whatever Happened to the Confessional Voice in American Poetry?" ELLE Conference, Partium Christian University, Oradea (Romania), September 15, 2012.

60.  Roundtable contribution, "Celebrating 50 years of Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools." American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, May 25, 2012.

61.  "Transatlantic Literary Journeys." Narrenschiff / Ship of Fools. A Transatlantic Encounter. Conference at the University of Fribourg, directed by Thomas Austenfeld, May 11-12, 2012.

62.  "Nobody's Nation: What Remains of Multiculturalism in American Literature?" Tertium Datur: Hybridisierung, Synkretismus, Créolité. Interdisziplinäres Kolloquium Universität Fribourg, April 20, 2012.

63.  "The Last Report: Louise Erdrich between Communities—A Comparative Analysis." Native America: Indigenous Self-Representation in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Conference at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, February 24-25, 2012.

64.  ERASMUS visit to Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, February 9-11, 2012. Presentations: (1) "Library and Database Research Using Remote Catalogues." (2) "Robert Lowell's Life Studies and the Obsession with Cleanliness."

65.  "Robert Lowell in the Bathroom." Mid-Twentieth-Century Poets and Cultural Change.  PAMLA Conference, November 6, 2011, Scripps College, Claremont, CA.

66.  "European Perspectives on the American West." Invited Lecture, California State University Bakersfield, November 3, 2011.

67.  "Looking for 'Siegfried': Generation Without Farewell and the Life Story of a German Journalist." American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 28, 2011.

68.  "Recollection and Revolution: Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle as Poets." American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 28, 2011.

69.  "Mule and Wagon vs the Dixie Limited: Transportation in Flannery O'Connor." SAUTE Conference, Bern, May 7, 2011.

70.  "Violence in American History, Literature, and Culture." Invited Lecture, Partium Christian University, Oradea (Romania), April 15, 2011.

71.  "Terrorism as Satire: America's Tacky Empire and Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy." Presented at the conference "Terrorism through the Lens of Literary Epistemology: Historical Imagination and Narrative Practice," University of Fribourg, December 3, 2010.

72.  "Parallel Lives: Kay Boyle, Tamara de Lempicka, and Cool Modernism." SANAS joint conference with AAAS Innsbruck, November 12, 2010.

73.  "Pigs, Ghosts, and a Ship of  Fools: Modernist American Women Writers and Totalitarian Europe." SAGVL Conference "Autoritäre Moderne / Modernité et Autorité" in Fribourg, Switzerland, October 8-9, 2010.

74.  "The Voice of the Academic Writer: Nonfiction Essays and the Question of Authority."  Conference of the European Association of English Studies (ESSE) in Torino, Italy,  August 25, 2010.

75.  "Transcontinental Hemingway." International Hemingway Conference Lausanne, Switzerland, June 29, 2010.

76.  "The Age of Lowell and the Discontinuities of American Poetry." Invited Guest Lecture, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia, Italy, March 20, 2010.

77.  "Information Literacy for Ph.D. students." Invited Guest Lecture, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy, March 18, 2010.

78.  "'Drowning is not so pitiful': Matchimanito Lake as historical, therapeutic, and demiurgic locale in Louise Erdrich's work." Spanish Association for American Studies Conference, Barcelona, April 2, 2009.

79.  "Between Homage and Autobiography: Learning and Teaching in David Levin's Exemplary Elders (1990) and Frank McCourt's Teacher Man (2005)." Academic Autobiography Conference, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, March 28, 2009.

80.  "Rosicky's Neighbors: Values, Virtues, and the Contingency of Criticism." Invited Guest Lecture, English Department of the University of Bern, Switzerland, March 9, 2009.

81.  "Genre, Voice, Identity: Nonfiction Prose and the Personal Essay." Swiss Society of General and Comparative Literature, University of Fribourg, March 7, 2009.

82.  "Arthur Miller's The Misfits: The Last Frontier of the West." University of Lausanne English Department, December 5, 2008.

83.  "Rosicky's Neighbors: Values, Virtues, and the Contingency of Criticism." English Department of the University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, November 21, 2008.

84.  "Locked Up Underground: Kay Boyle and Prisons." Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association of North American Studies, Crêt-Bérard, November 15, 2008.

85.  "Teaching Lowell Beyond the Alps: A Multilingual Approach to Imitations." American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, May 23, 2008.

86.  "Four Visions of America: Beyond the Unum." Biennial EAAS (European Association of American Studies) Conference, Oslo, May 11, 2008.

87.  "Rosicky's Neighbors: Values, Virtues, and the Contingency of Criticism." Antrittsvorlesung / Leçon Inaugurale, University of Fribourg, April 30, 2008.

88.  "The Fret of Modernism: The Discourse of Fear in American Culture, 1917-1941." Miroirs de la Peur. Journée d'Etude / Tagung, University of Fribourg, October 12, 2007.

89.  "A Happy Naturalist?  Jeremy Bentham and the Cosmic Morality of The Octopus." American Literature Association Conference, Boston MA, May 2007.

90.  "Playing the Prodigal: Walcott's Variations on a Biblical Parable." "The Caribbean Unbound" Conference, Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland, March 31, 2007.

91.  "Sensations: The Hypertrophy of Aesthetics in Philip Roth's Everyman."  Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association of North American Studies, Geneva, November 11, 2006.

92.  "The Spinet and the Coffin: Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Music."  American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 26, 2006.

93.  "Negotiating Frontiers in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain."  VIIIth Conference on "European Culture," Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (Spain), October 20, 2005.

94.  "'Will the real Louise Erdrich please stand up?'  Unearthing German heritage and culture in The Master Butchers Singing Club."  American Literature Association Conference, Boston MA, May 27, 2005.

95.  "Walcott's Omeros: Starting a New World." 20th Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 24-26, 2005.

96.  "Reluctant Modernism: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Spanish Baroque Culture."  Ninth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Pamplona (Spain), August 3, 2004. 

97.  "Research Projects Exploring Connections between Spanish and Austrian Literature."  Presented at "Into the Classroom: Incorporating Faculty Seminars and Teaching Abroad into the Curriculum."  March 12-13, 2004, Clayton College and State University.

98.  "Spanish Baroque and Austrian Modernism in Hugo von Hofmannsthal."  20th Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 26-28, 2004.

99.  "Giving Everyone a Voice: Translating von Hofmannsthal's Jedermann" at a Special Session, "World Poetry in Translation" at SAMLA, Atlanta GA, 14-16 November, 2003.

100.                  "'Our Cleopatra': Peter Taylor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Southern Identity" at the American Literature Association Conference, Cambridge MA, May 23, 2003.

101.                  [with Tanya Bennett] "Begin Here: Introducing African-American Literature into General Education" at Kennesaw State University's conference "Stepping Up to the Plate: Best Practices in Diversity Education," April 26, 2003.

102.                  "Peter Taylor's A Summons to Memphis: Duty Ethics and American Individualism."  20th Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 27 – March 1, 2003.

103.                  "American Women Writers in Europe."  Invited Theme Day Lecture, Drury University, Springfield MO, February 20, 2003.

104.                  Introductory Speaker at NGCSU Faculty Retreat: "Why Should We Care About Ethics?"  Black Mountain Lodge, Dahlonega GA, Sept. 13, 2002.

105.                  "Shifting the Ground of Responsibility: The two versions of Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth."  20th Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 21-23, 2002.

106.                  "Memories of Heidelberg: Stafford's Multiple Selves and the Negotiation of Collusive Guilt."  SAMLA, Atlanta GA, November 9-11, 2001.

107.                  "Ron Hansen's Women: Politics, Religion, Sexuality."  Western Literature Association Conference, Omaha NE, October 17-21, 2001.

108.                  "Ethical Criticism and Porter's Voice." American Literature Association Conference (Katherine Anne Porter Society), Cambridge MA, May 24, 2001.

109.                  "Generation Without Farewell: Kay Boyle's Ethical Assessment of Germany."  20th Century Literature Conference, Louisville KY, February 22, 2001.

110.                  "Teaching Values through Western haecceitas:  Western Stories, Lived Experience, Ethical Models."  "Spiritual Frontiers" Conference at Brigham Young University, Provo UT, March 30-April 2, 2000.

111.                  "Language as a Tool of Honesty." (Workshop: Language as a Tool).  Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Haifa (Israel), August 1998.

112.                  "Travellers, Not Tourists:  The Trope of Travel as Acculturation."  (Workshop: Perceptions of the Arts and Texts of the Twentieth Century).  Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Haifa (Israel), August 1998.

113.                  "'Fear in a Handful of Dust': Foreigners Experience the West in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees."  Western Literature Association Annual Meeting, Albuquerque NM, October 15-19, 1997.

114.                  "Thomas Wolfe and Katherine Anne Porter: Two Americans Discover Their Democratic Roots."  International Thomas Wolfe Conference, Munich (Germany), May 23-25, 1997.

115.                  "Mirandas Abroad: Two Girls of the Golden West Meet the Nazis."  Western Literature Association, Lincoln NE, October 2-5, 1996.

116.                  "Memory, Literature, and European Nation States."  Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Utrecht (Netherlands), August 19-24, 1996.

117.                  "Porter's Totalitarianism Revisited."  Katherine Anne Porter Society at the American Literature Association's Annual Conference in Baltimore, MD, May 27-30, 1995.

118.                  "Problems of Regional Identity: Katherine Anne Porter as Western Writer."  Western Literature Association Conference, Salt Lake City, October 5-8, 1994.

119.                  "'O Bella Roma': Robert Lowell's Religious Imagination in the Nineteen-Fifties."  LeMoyne Forum on Religion and Literature, Syracuse (New York), October 15-17, 1993.

120.                  "The Necessary Imagination: European Writers Encounter the West."  Western Literature Association Conference, Wichita (Kansas), October 7-9, 1993.

121.                  "Under the Microscope: Porter and Steinbeck Dissect Humanity."  Northeastern MLA Conference in Philadelphia, March 1993.

122.                  "Day by Day: Lowell's Poetic Eschatology."  Southeastern Conference on Christianity and Literature, New Orleans, 4-6 February 1993.

123.                  "From Mexico to Germany: Katherine Anne Porter and Politics."  International Katherine Anne Porter Conference at Baylor University (Waco, TX), 14-16 May 1992.

 

Professional Organizations

  Teaching Experience – University of Fribourg   (in chronological order 2006-2025)

Fall 2006  

 

·        Lecture: American Literature, 1865-1914

·        Seminar: Realism and Naturalism

·        Proseminar: The Western

Spring 2007

·        Lecture: American Literature, 1914-1945

·        Seminar: American Expatriate Writers

·        Proseminar: Modernist Identities in T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"

Fall 2007

·        Lecture: American Literature, 1945-Present

·        Seminar: Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop

·        Proseminar: Louise Erdrich

Spring 2008

·        Lecture: Early American Literature through 1836

·        Seminar: The Nation and the Self: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin

·        Proseminar: Arthur Miller, Selected Plays

Fall 2008

·        Lecture: American Renaissance, 1836-1861

·        Seminar: Wicked Books and Wicked Witches: Melville and Hawthorne

·        Proseminar: Nature, Nation, Self: Emerson's Essays

·        Research Colloquium

Spring 2009

·        Lecture: Machines, Gardens, Factories: American Literature in the late 19th Century

·        Seminar: Studies in Determinism: Crane, Dreiser, Norris

·        Proseminar: Willa Cather, Selected Novels

·        Research Colloquium

Fall 2009 (Dean's teaching reduction)

·        Lecture: Transcontinental Hemingway

·        Research Colloquium

Spring 2010 (Dean's teaching reduction)

 

·        Seminar: San Francisco in History, Literature, and Politics (co-taught with Dr. Catherine Bosshart)

·        Research Colloquium

Fall 2010 (Dean's teaching reduction)

·        Lecture: American Poetry since the Age of Lowell

·        Seminar: Derek Walcott: Periphery and Center

Spring 2011 (Dean's teaching reduction)

·        Lecture: American Fiction since 1960

·        Seminar: John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy as Social History of the United States

Fall 2011

·        Research Sabbatical

Spring 2012

·        First-Year Module Lecture: An Overview of American Literary History

·        Proseminar: Introduction to Literary Studies

·        Proseminar: The Western

·        Research Colloquium

Fall 2012

·        Lecture: Early American Literature: Columbus to Emerson

·        Proseminar: American Essays from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Joan Didion

·        Seminar: 20th-century American Poetry, Part One: From Masters & Robinson to Lowell & Bishop

Spring 2013

·        Lecture: American Literature 1836 – 1914

·        Proseminar: American Memoirs and Life Writing since 1989

·        Seminar: Visions of the West: Wallace Stegner to Sherman Alexie

·        Research Colloquium

Fall 2013

·        Lecture: American Literature 1914 – 1945

·        Proseminar: Literary Theory

·        Seminar: 20th-century American Poetry, Part Two: From the mid-sixties to the present

Spring 2014

·        Research Sabbatical (Dean's compensation)

Fall 2014

·        First-Year Module Lecture: Introduction to Literary Studies

·        Proseminar: Introduction to Literary Studies

·        Seminar: The American South

Spring 2015

·        First-Year Module Lecture: An Overview of American Literary History . Tradition and Innovation in American Drama (World Literature Part IV)

·        Proseminar : Introduction to Literary Studies

·        Seminar : Expatriate Autobiographies

Fall 2015

·        Lecture: American Prose Fiction in the Third Millennium

·        Proseminar: The Art of the Essay

·        Seminar: Women's Lives in Turn-of-the-Century Novels: Crane, Chopin, Dreiser, Wharton, Cather

Spring 2016

·        Lecture: History of American Poetry: Whitman's Legacy

·        Proseminar: Freedom and Form in American Modernist Poems

·        Seminar: Writing New York

Fall 2016

Pre-semester:  BA/MA seminar and excursion. Creative Writing New York

·        Lecture: Nineteenth-Century Prose Fiction: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Twain 

·        Proseminar:  Fictions of Communities: Cisneros, Morrison, Boyden 

·        Seminar: Dark Visions: The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick 

Spring 2017

·        Lecture: History of American Poetry: Dickinson’s Legacy  

·        Proseminar: Southern Literature and Poverty: Theroux, Faulkner, Ward  

·        Seminar: Robert Lowell – The Centennial Seminar

Fall 2017

·       Research Sabbatical

 

Spring 2018

·        Lecture: A Survey of American Literature, Part II (Intro class)

·        Proseminar: Introduction to Literary Study

·        Seminar: Foundational Documents of American Democracy

·        [University of Berne] Lecture: American Poetry and Culture

Fall 2018

·        Lecture: Social Justice Debates in American Literature

·        Proseminar: Becoming a Reader and Scholar of American Literature I

·        Seminar: Pathos and the American Tradition

 

Spring 2019

·        Lecture: American Autobiographies

·        Proseminar: Becoming a Reader and Scholar of American Literature II

·        Seminar: Women's Lives in Naturalist Fiction: Crane, Chopin, Dreiser, Wharton, Cather

  • [University of Berne] Lecture: American Realism and Naturalism 

Fall 2019

·        Lecture: Three American Epics: Song of Myself, The Waste Land, Omeros

·        Proseminar: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Writer and Activist

·        Seminar:  Walt Whitman at 200: Leaves of Grass and Prose Works

Spring 2020

  • Lecture: Fiction since 2015
  • Proseminar: San Francisco and its literature
  • Seminar:  Visions of the American West

Fall 2020

·        Lecture: American Drama

·        Proseminar: Becoming a Reader and Scholar of American Literature I

·        Seminar: African American Women Poets

·        [University of Berne] Lecture: American Drama

Spring 2021

·        Lecture: Survey of American Literature (Intro module class)

·        Proseminar: Becoming a Reader and Scholar of American Literature II

·        Seminar: Music and the American Novel

Fall 2021

·        Lecture: The Forgotten Nineteen-Thirties    

·        Proseminar:  Democracy in America? 

·        Seminar: American Memoirs and Life Writing since 2000       

Spring 2022

·        Lecture: Survey of American Literature (Intro module class)

·        Proseminar: Rhetoric and Narrative in American Fiction

·        Seminar: (with Prof. Julia Straub) Modernism Centennial: Poetry 

Fall 2022

·        Lecture: Six Great Debates in 19th-century America: Expansion, Indigeneity, Slavery, Gender, War, Industrialization

·        Proseminar: Contemporary North American Drama

·        Seminar: American Modernism in Prose

Spring 2023

·        Lecture: Survey of American Literature (Intro module class)

·        Proseminar:  Scorn not the Sonnet!

·        Seminar: Who Tells Your Story? Narrative, Authorship, Authority

Fall 2023

·        Lecture: History of American Poetry

·        Proseminar: American Essays—Art and Voice, Part One: Beginnings to 1950

·        Seminar: Regionalism—the West and the South [with Dr. Aurélie Zurbrügg] 

Spring 2024

·        Lecture: Short Stories: A National Art Form

·        Proseminar: American Essays—Art and Voice, Part Two: 1950 to the Present

·        Seminar: Milton in America

Fall 2024

·        Lecture: Survey of American Literature (Intro module class)

·        Proseminar: Violence and the American Novel

·        Seminar: How to read American Poems  (with Journée d'études with Profs. Uhlig and Müller)

Spring 2025

·        Lecture: American Self-Deception and Self-Renewal

·        Proseminar: Louise Erdrich

·        Seminar: TBA

  

Theses supervised at the University of Fribourg   (chronological order)

Completed (B.A., M.A., “License”)

B.A. Theses since 2007 (and comprehensive oral exams, beginning 2017)

1.     Mathilde Waeber, "Blackness and / as Social Construction in Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen," BA 2007

2.     Eric Miller, "Scarlett and Blanche: An Evolution of the Southern Belle," BA 2007

3.     Ivana Plechaty, "Carl Gustav Jung in Saul Bellow's Herzog and Henderson the Rain King, BA 2007

4.     Maribel Bueno, "Anishinaabe Spirituality in Louise Erdrich's Works," BA 2008

5.     Martin Häsler, "To Alter Destiny--an Irresolvable Quest [Kurt Vonnegut]," BA 2008

6.     Francesca Sartore, "Cities and Sewers in Baudelaire and Eliot," BA 2008

7.     Alexis Wilson, "Literary Characteristics of American Contemporary Comic Books," BA 2008

8.     Santiago Cruz Petersen, "Form and Effect of Whitman's 'Song of Myself,'" BA 2009

9.     Cinzia Minervini Jordan, "Riding Towards Freedom: Moral Responsibility in the Work of Arthur Miller," BA 2009

10.  Emmanuelle Bourguet, "Hopelessness in the Plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams," BA 2009

11.  Karine Antille, "Patriarchy, Women’s solidarity and their impact on inter-sexual relationships in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place and The Men of Brewster Place," BA 2009 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)

12.  Pierre Defferrard, "Childhood in the Deep South: Influence of family, friends and society on Huck Finn, Scout Finch and Richard Wright," BA 2010

13.  Niklas Fischer, "New Orleans vs. Chicago: Two Types of Carnival in Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side and The Man With the Golden Arm," BA 2010

14.  Dana Antonioli, "Violence in Bastard Out of Carolina, Coming of Age in Mississippi, and Desert Flower," BA 2010

15.  Julia Bachmann, "Bebop influence on the conceptualisation of time in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road," BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)

16.  Åsa Semple, "Religious and Moral Decay in The Great Gatsby," BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)

17.  Thomas M. Meier, "Science and Entertainment in Contemporary Ecological Films," BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)

18.  Fabio Gramegna, "Madness in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales: 'The terror of the soul'," BA 2010

19.  Jeremy Gremaud, "Edgar Allan Poe’s, Mark Twain’s and Ambrose Bierce’s Satire: The Effect of the Civil War on the 'Ritualized Attack' Against Society’s Ignorance," BA 2011

20.  Christian Keist, "The Representation of History and Time in the Black Arts Movement’s Drama and the Influence of the Nation of Islam," BA 2011

21.  Aurélie Morard, "'Unsilencing' the Outcast. From Postcolonial to Global Literature," BA 2012

22.  Nora Studer, "Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye: The reciprocal influence of the protagonists' disorder/disease and their estrangement," BA 2012

23.  Veronica Sergi, "How do unreliable narrators contribute to the reader's aesthetic awareness?", BA 2013

24.  Jessica Saillen, "The survival of American Indian traditions in James Welch’s Fools Crow and Louise Erdrich’s The Bingo Palace," BA 2013

25.  Nadja T. Camesi, "A Tough Guy--The Male Hero in Western and Hard-boiled fiction," BA 2013

26.  Fanny Maendly, "Manhood Behind Bars: An Analysis of Malcolm X's Autobiography and Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying," BA 2013

27.  Anita Pervanic, "Joan Didion: Home of Words," BA 2013

28.  Loïc Obertüfer, "Obsession and Madness in Narrating Wieland, Pym, and Ethan Frome," BA 2013

29.  David Schwery, "Black Politicians and Their Speeches," BA 2013

30.  Anne-Laure Boéchat, "Gender Determination in Hemingway's The Garden of Eden," BA 2013

31.  Patrick Puzdrowski, "Women in Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories," BA 2014

32.  Preethy Alex, "Troy Maxson: An Interconnected Collective. A Lacanian Analysis of August Wilson's Fences," BA 2014

33.  Nathalia Schweizer, "Postwar Youth in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye," BA 2014

34.  Valentin Bruegger, "American Expatriate Writing: Framing the Paris Moment," BA 2014

35.  Mélanie Balet, "Aspects of the Gothic in Horace Walpole, Charles Brockden Brown, and Edgar Allan Poe," BA 2015

36.  Zita Buess-Watson, " Native Americans in Western Literature and Art," BA 2015

37.  Charlène Minster, "Catherine in The Garden of Eden: An Analysis Applying Feminist Criticism and Psychoanalytical Criticism," BA 2015

38.  Mélanie Voyame, "A Structuralist Analysis of Three Detective Novels," BA 2015

39.  Michèle Cirelli, "Justice and Power in Young Adult Fiction: An Analysis of The Giver, The Hunger Games, and To Kill a Mockingbird," BA 2015

40.  Diana Helfer, " Crying for a Vision: The Lives and Visions of Margery Kempe and Black Elk," BA 2015 (co-supervised with Prof. Elisabeth Dutton)

41.  Aurélie Zurbrügg, "Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' and Crane's The Bridge: A Journey Into a New Era," BA 2015

42.  Lorenzo Ghiggia, "A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway's War Novels Seen through the Eyes of Two Soldiers in Love," BA 2016

43.  Clelia Alberici, "The Female Character in Young Adult Novels," BA 2016

44.  Fabienne Eberhard, "Thornton Wilder beyond Our Town," BA 2017

45.  Celine Scheidegger, "Nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The Blithedale Romance," BA 2017

46.  Amélia Godel, "Women Characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Works," BA 2017

47.  Arusa Chughtai, "On Hybridity: The Millennial Muslim," BA 2017

48.  Marie Gaspoz, "African American Women's Self-actualization Within the Black Community," BA 2017

49.  Patricia Machado Soares, "Imperfections Beneath Suburban Life: A close reading of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and Revolutionary Road," BA 2017

50.  Baptiste Arnoux, "The Experience of Expatriation and its Consequences on Personality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast," BA 2017

51.  Noella Tinguely, "The Impact of Domestic Ideologies on the Slave Mother's Self-Identity in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl (1861) and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987)," BA 2017

52.  Kathrin Schütz, "Who am I? – Loss of Control and Personal Space Through the Environment in Dystopian Fiction," BA 2017

53.  Samuele Ramelli, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017

54.  Méline Murisier, "Between Dystopia and Uchronia: A Shift in Reality.  Perspectives on the Totalitarian State in Three American Novels," BA 2017

55.  Justine Salvadori, "John Fante and the Italian-American Myth of Assimilation in Wait Until Spring, Bandini; The Brotherhood of the Grape and West of Rome," BA 2017

56.  Olivia Stettler, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017

57.  Kevin Maillard, "Frederick Douglass – The Self-Taught Slave Who Became an Accomplished Writer," BA 2017

58.  Laura Muehlebach, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017

59.  Leandra Hörler, "Truth and Lying in Four Plays by Arthur Miller," BA 2018

60.  Anna Borella, "The American Justice System on Trial: Confronting the Role of Race and Class," BA 2018

61.  Andrea Leu, "Violence and Identity in Native American Literature: Joseph Boyden's The Orenda and Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer," BA 2018

62.  Anna Vestermark Caccia, "Displaced and Misplaced: Cultural Syncretism and Plural Identities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck," BA 2018

63.  Elsa Berset, "The Madman as Hero in Jack Kerouac's On the Road," BA 2018

64.  Fabienne Widmer, "Constructed Masculinity in Junot Diaz's 'The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her," BA 2018

65.  Julie Beytrison, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2018

66.  Patrick de Azevedo, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

67.  Sanida Meša, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

68.  Jessica Turpin, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

69.  Mylène Schuwey, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

70.  Claudia Jenrich, "Depression in Recent Young Adult Novels: The Memory of Light and All the Bright Places," BA 2019

71.  Martina Piffaretti, "Abuse and Objectification of African American Women in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself and The Color Purple," BA 2019

72.  Jeannette Widmer, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

73.  Talena Zbinden, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

74.  Zofia Brunner, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019

75.  Blerina Hoti, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

76.  Maria Martinovic, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

77.  Barbara Rossi, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

78.  Vanessa d'Antino, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

79.  Andrea Lehmann, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

80.  Blerina Abdula, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

81.  Justine Dubail, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

82.  Elisa Zaccaria, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

83.  Katja Andlauer, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

84.  Madeleine Antille, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

85.  Océane Page, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

86.  Lisa Dusina, "Hawthorne, Baum, and Miller: Witchcraft and Utopia in Selected American Texts," BA 2020

87.  Léa Ducrest, "How can a black immigrant woman feel equally at home in two different places?," BA 2020

88.  Antonio Pedro Fangueiro Pires, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

89.  Benedita Lucau, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

90.  Myriam Miraoui, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

91.  Anna Tedeschi, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020

92.  Noemie Jeannet, “Social justice and capitalism in literature:  The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle,” BA 2021

93.  Yanik Brawand, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

94.  Damien Elsig, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

95.  Celia Arnold, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

96.  Alina Müller, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

97.  Sophie Jacquier, "Controlling Sex, Reproduction and Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God," BA 2021

98.  Sofia Vassere, "The Oxygen Man" as a Double Bildungsroman," BA 2021

99.  Jeremy Wright, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

100.         Gioja Weibel, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

101.         Maurizio Vannetti, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021

102.        Francisca Domingues dos Santos (advised by Aurélie Zurbrügg), " Creating Identity: Jazz Features in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Toni Morrison’s Jazz," BA  2021

103.         Noemi Aebli (advised by Aurélie Zurbrügg), "Social and Hierarchical Structures in American Alternate Histories. An Analysis of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America," BA 2021

104.        Joanne Waeber, "The Art of Immersive Storytelling in Taylor Swift and F. Scott Fitzgerald," BA 2021

105.        Hervé Pollet, “Edith Wharton’s Critique of New York High Society in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence: Fashion, Gender Roles, and Money in the Gilded Age,” BA 2022

106.        Marine Bussard, "The Representation of Hurricanes Okeechobee and Katrina in Literature," BA 2022

107.        Emma de Reyff, "Examining the Challenges to Black Femininity in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun," BA 2022

108.        Giosuè Rocco Antorini, “Space and Place in Contemporary Mexican Immigration Novels: a Literary-Geographical Analysis of Signs Preceding the End of the World and American Dirt,” BA 2023

109.        Inès Baltic, “Identity of California Women in Joan Didion’s Fiction. An analysis of female characters in Run River and Play It as It Lays,” BA 2023

110.        Muriel Amstutz, “Police Brutality and Systemic Racism against African Americans in American Literature,” BA 2023

 

M.A. Theses & License Mémoires

1.     Sina Lenherr, "Back to the Reservation: Three Male Character in their Search for Identity in Selected Novels by Louise Erdrich," License 2007

2.     Lenka Curdova, "The Family Conflict: Three Plays of Eugene O'Neill," License 2008

3.     [external advisor] Anne Jobin [Université de Neuchâtel], "Shifting Identities: Mixedbloods in Native American Literature," License 2008

4.     Helen Walker, "The Inescapable Past: Form, Family and Denial in Arthur Miller's Plays All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Price," MA 2008

5.     Sabine-Anna Marro, "Two Turn-of-the-Century California Novels: María Amparo Ruíz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don and Frank Norris's The Octopus -- 'Novels with a Purpose'?," MA 2008. Recipient of the 2008 SANAS Teaching Travel Award.

6.     Naomi Hasler, "The Portrait of a New Woman? How Margaret Fuller's political ideology and Henry James's fictional reality clash," MA 2008. Winner of the Prize for Equality and Gender Research of the University of Fribourg 2010.

7.     Julie Hoogewoud, "Beyond Minimalism: Silence as Narrative Strategy in the Fiction of Raymond Carver," MA 2009

8.     Laura Tschanz, "The Importance of Knowing One's Past in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby," MA 2009

9.     Mauro Ciresa, "Investigation in Edgar Allan Poe's Detective Tales," MA 2009

10.  Eric Miller, "Adams and Jefferson: True Friends or Friendly Foes?" MA 2009

11.  Mélanie Baillifard, "Literary Responses to Indian Policies from 1800 to 1840. From Poetical Justification to Real Protest," MA 2009

12.  Stefania Russo, " The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley as the Anti-Slavery Campaign of  a Black Woman in Revolutionary America ," MA 2010

13.  Roberta Vaghi, "Magical Realism in Selected Novels by Toni Morrison," MA 2010

14.  Elisa Burri Monnard, "Women’s Lives in Essays and Stories in Godey’s Lady’s Magazine," MA 2010

15.  Mathilde Waeber, "American Indian Cultural Identity and the Search for Affection in James Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony," MA 2010

16.  Francesca Massei, "Women in the Gothic Narratives of Matthew G. Lewis and Charles Brockden Brown," License 2010

17.  Luzia Wicki, "Shockingly Wealthy: The High as a Way of Life," License 2010

18.  Ola Madhour, "Degeneration and the 'Lost America" in Henry James's Roderick Hudson and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises," MA 2011

19.  Alexis Wilson, "Magic in Chicano Magical Realism," MA 2011

20.  Claudia Furrer, "Sociolinguistic Concepts and Literary Analysis: The Outsider Protagonist in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces," MA 2011

21.  Julia Bachmann, "F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Jelly-bean,' Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and all that Jazz," MA 2012

22.  Emmanuelle Bourguet, "Courageous Souls: The Portrayal of Women in Chopin's The Awakening and Wharton's Summer," MA 2012. Recipient of the 2012 SANAS Teaching Travel Award.

23.  Jeremy Gremaud, "Canadian, Female and Individual Identities in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye and Alias Grace," MA 2012

24.  Carine Maffli, "The Legacy of Satan: A Reading of Melville's Ahab in the Light of Milton's Satan, MA 2012

25.  Cinzia Minervini Jordan, "Being and Becoming: A Reading of Arthur Miller's Focus and The Crucible in the Light of Giorgio Agamben," MA 2012

26.  Ryan Kopaitich, "Narrating Postmodernism: A Study of Two Postmodern Novels," MA Comparative Literature 2012

27.  Andrea Meier, "Marginal Communities and Ethnic Conflicts in Selected Novels by Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison," MA 2012

28.  Lawrence Faulstich, "War as a Prism of 20th-century American Identity," MA 2013

29.  Nathalie Codina, "Emily Dickinson's Poetics and Weltanschauung," MA 2014

30.  Jessica Meier, "Ecofeminism and Dualisms in Terry Tempest Williams," MA 2014

31.  Céline Sidler, "The American Dream's Mythology in Three Immigrant Women's Novels," MA 2014

32.  Rekik Scholler-Mekonnen, "Speculative Encounters: Negotiating Survival and Kinship in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Dawn," MA 2014

33.  Alain Wider, "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hybrid Poet," MA 2014

34.  Robert Zenhäusern, "The Conversion Paradox: New World Christianity and African Spirituality in Selected Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives," MA 2014

35.  Biljana Vuchovska, "The Value of Green Visions: Environmental Philosophy in Walden, Ecotopia and The Word for World is Forest," MA 2014

36.  Åsa Semple,"From Abasement to Strength: Gender Identity in Toni Morrison's Sula and Paradise," MA 2014

37.  Sibylle Lüthi, "Representational Affirmation: Examining Sherman Alexie's Struggles with the Language of Authenticity," MA 2015

38.  Valeria Cruz Petersen Rast, "'A wild night and a new road': From Death to Poetics in  Emily Dickinson's Poetry," MA 2015

39.  James Violette, "The Judge and the Boy: Violence and Holiness in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Road," MA 2015

40.  Fanny Maendly, "Female Protagonists in Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives: Jacobs, Williams, and Butler," MA 2015

41.  Anne-Laure Boéchat, "Land, Gender, and Ethnicity in Willa Cather's Characters," MA 2015

42.  Patrizia Zanella, "'universal mirrors that are my eyes': The Gaze in Louise Erdrich," MA 2015

43.  Olivia Oberson, "The Challenges of Nonconformity: Communities in Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, Chopin's The Awakening, and Wharton's The House of Mirth," MA 2015

44.  Maria Teresa Delgado, "Switzerland as an In-Between State in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Selected Short Stories," MA 2015

45.  Jessica Saillen, "The Influence of Mixed-race Identity in American Literature Through Three Perspectives: Native American, African American and Hispanic," MA 2015

46.  Tania Pannatier, "Double Consciousness. Mixed-race women characters in William Wells Brown, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, and Nella Larsen," MA 2016

47.  Loïc Obertüfer, "Tennessee Williams's Dramatic Development: The Magic Tower, The Purification, The Glass Menagerie & Suddenly Last Summer," MA 2016

48.  Edith Carron, "Lily Bart and Gertrude Stein: Contrasting Two Modernist Performances," MA 2016

49.  Preethy Alex, "The Third Continent -- the Domestic Space of Malayali Americans and Bengali Americans in the United States," MA 2016

50.  Andrew Niemann, "Finding Meaning in the Everyday: Understanding Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine through William James," MA 2016

51.  Anita Pervanic, "'layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs': The Southern Grotesque and Ideal Femininity in the Fiction of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers," MA 2016

52.  Simon Weisskopf, "Bob Dylan. The Poet Who Aged in Public," MA 2016

53.  Patricia Fux, "Demystifying the Lost Generation: A Collection of Data," MA 2016

54.  Sabie Zenku Baftiri, "Ambiguous Mother(hood) in Sylvia Plath's Poetry and Prose," MA 2017

55.  Sharon Reidy Miller, "Is Eleanor Roosevelt's Portrayal of Women Both Honest and Truthful?", MA 2017

56.  Melis Öner, "'You're Not the Indian I Had in Mind': Self-Representation versus Stereotypes in Sherman Alexie and Thomas King," MA 2017

57.  Alicia Szüts, "Women and the Holocaust: A Double Victimization," MA 2017

58.  Noémie Fragnière, "Struggling Female Artists in Selected Novels by Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin and Willa Cather," MA 2017

59.  Nathalia Schweizer, "Female Authenticity in American Literary Naturalism," MA 2017

60.  Michèle Cirelli, "Contrasting Critical Approaches to Wharton, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos," MA 2017

61.  Célia Germanier, "The Blues as Musical Legacy of African-American History," MA 2017¨

62.  Cynthia Staehlin, "Representing Terrorism in Hersey's Hiroshima, DeLillo's Falling Man and Updike's Terrorist," MA 2017

63.  Mirella Arimondi, "Power and Behavior in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Butler's Kindred and Eggers's The Circle," MA 2017

64.  Aurélie Zurbrügg, "'I just wanted to go home': Toni Morrison's Quest For the Ideal Home in Her Fiction," MA 2017

65.  Elisa Pagliaro, "'I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do':  James Baldwin's Phenomenological Ethics," MA 2018

66.  Marie Budon, "Journey into the Dark: Emily Dickinson's Gothic Imagination," MA 2018

67.  Valentin Brügger, “Vanishing Points: Escape and Separation in the Early Works of Jane & Paul Bowles,” MA 2019

68.  Michelle Riedberg, “Authentic Depiction or Wishful Projection: Children in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Alcott’s Little Women,” MA 2019

69.  Samuele Ramelli, “A Mirroring of Mankind’s Fears Through American Dystopian Literature,” MA 2019

70.  Amélia Godel, “’This life is a life of vicissitude’: Nineteenth-century American Women’s Letters, Between Duty and Disillusionment,” MA 2019

71.  Marie Gaspoz, “’I am a stranger to myself and a stranger now in this strange land.’ The Immigrant Experience in the United States Through Three Contemporary Narratives,” MA 2019

72.  Nora Rickli, "'To See What Is. … Possible.'  Reproductive Freedom in Contemporary Speculative Fiction," MA 2019

73.  Camille Merkofer, "Living the Ideal Life in American Suburbs and German Dörfer:  An Analysis of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, Juli Zeh's Unterleuten, and Arno Camenisch's Ustrinkata," MA 2019

74.  Christopher Bignasca, "Bob Dylan: The Leader Who Did Not Want to Be Followed," MA 2019

75.  Fabienne Eberhard, "Changing the Rules of the Game: A Literary Investigation of Social Systems of Oppression From Slavery to Mass Incarceration," MA 2020

76.  Anna Caccia, "'Two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings': Blackness and Americanness in Contemporary African American Memoirs," MA 2020

77.  Jonathan Modesti, "Wronged and Oppressed Identities: Abuse and its Effects on Women Characters in Stephen King's Carrie, Gerald's Game, and Big Driver," MA 2020

78.  Anna Borella, "Making a Movement: Pathos and Social Justice in Novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Chesnutt," MA 2020

79.  Céline Scheidegger, "Performing Personalities: Women on View in Selected Novels by Wharton, Cather, Yezierska and Larsen," MA 2020

80.  Valentina Prati, "Social Justices Debates in Chicana Literature: Castillo, Chávez and Cisneros Reinterpreting Anzaldúa," MA 2020

81.  Laura Carnal, "A Century of African American Identity: Wallace Thurman, Lorraine Hansberry, Danzy Senna & Ta-Nehisi Coates," MA 2020

82.  Milena Calcagni, "Advancing Socialism through Literary Advocacy in the United States: Engagement and Failure," MA 2020

83.  Simon Metry, "'Who shall say where the one ends, and the where the other begins?' Plagiarism and Literary Influence around Edgar Allan Poe," MA 2020

84.  Noëmi Werthmüller, "The power of orality and literacy in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novels The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments," MA 2021

85.  Prisca Genilloud, "Immigration in the United States: A Comparison of Immigrants' Experiences in The Jungle, My Ántonia, Hunger of Memory and Jasmine," MA 2021

86.  Isabella Bianchi, "Maya Angelou the Womanist, or How a Phenomenal Woman Comes into Being," MA 2021

87.  Alida Savio, "The Representation of Black Women in Contemporary Literature," MA 2021

88.  Simona Suardi, "The Good in the Bad: Dysfunctional Families in American Literature. Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle (2005) and Trevor Noah's Born a Crime (2016)," MA 2021

89.  Matthias Calderari, "Living on the Hyphen: Biculturalism and Latinidad in Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican (1994) and Almost a Woman (1999), Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban (1992)," MA 2021

90.  Patrick Correia de Azevedo, "Masculinity, Race, and Queerness in Tarell Alvin McCraney's Plays," MA 2021 

91.  Andrea Leu Escobar, “Travel Literature, The Other and Patagonia. An Analysis of Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonia Express, Luis Sepúlveda’s Patagonia Express and Mempo Giardinelli’s Final de Novela en Patagonia,” MA 2022

92.  Elsa Berset, “Narratives of Moral Uncertainty: Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” MA 2022

93.  Jeannette Widmer, "Feminism and Afropolitanism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah," MA 2022

94.  Vanessa d'Antino, "Invisibility, Blackness and Whiteness in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, MA 2022

95.  Justine Dubail, "Misogyny and the Myth of Masculinity: Portrayal of Women in Hip Hop Lyrics," MA 2023

96.  Svetlana Nikolic, "Identity Issues in the Theatre of David Henry Hwang," MA 2023

97.  Maéva Uldry, "Orphan Girls in Early Twentieth-Century Children's Fiction. A comparative analysis of Alice Hegan Rice's Lovey Mary (1903), Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908) and Alice B. Emerson's Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm or What Became of the Raby Orphans (1915)," MA 2023

98.  Sophie Jacquier, “An Intersectional Approach of Mutual Unknowability and Orality Between Mother and Daughter in American Literature: Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Louise Erdrich and Amy Tan,” MA 2023

99.  Michèle Wermeille, “Impossible Choices and Muted Voices. Female Agency and Abortion in Four American Novels from 1917 to 2017,” MA 2023

 

Ph.D. Projects

 

Completed

Mariacristina Natalia Bertoli. The Mirror, the Cup and the Crystal. Iconic Implications of Disappearance and Representation in the American Tradition of Riddle Poetry.  (October 2012)

Martin Moling. "Shake, Rattle and Write": Rock Music in American Fiction Writing, 1966-2011. (October 2013)

Ola Madhour. "Knowledge of Necessity": Maternal Origins in Elizabeth Bishop's Epistemological Quest. (June 2015)  

Patrizia Zanella. The Border-Crossing Fiction of Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Tomson Highway, and Thomas King. Supported by a Doc.CH grant from the SNSF. (October 2019)

Mariam Taha, Literary Environmental Studies and the Representation of Urban Environments in Selected Novels. Co-tutelle with Cairo University, Egypt. (June 2022)

Aurélie Zurbrügg, The Message on the Wall. The Wall as a Medium in Public Art and Contemporary Fiction. (February 2023)

In Progress

Rachael Franke. "Is It Black and White?: Portrayals of Mothers in Contemporary US American Novels."

 

Recent Service, awards, and other activities      (inverse chronological order)

University of Fribourg 

  • “Teaching the American South Today.”  Teacher Development Workshop, Weiterbildungszentrum Universität Freiburg, 20. September 2023.
  • MOVETIA visit to Boğaziçi University (Istanbul) for eight hours teaching on (1) Modernist American Poetry and (2) Toni Morrison's A Mercy, April 22-26, 2023.
  • Host and moderator, Book discussion group sponsored by the U.S. Embassy Bern on the occasion of Women's History Month, of Chemistry Lessons by Bonnie Garmus, March 15, 2023.
  • Director, Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association of North American Studies.  Fribourg, November 18-19, 2022.  Keynote speakers: Prof. Jim Phelan (The Ohio State University) and Prof. Natasha Trethewey (Northwestern University). https://events.unifr.ch/sanas22/en/
  • [with Aurélie Zurbrügg] Organizer, CUSO Doctoral Conference, "New Perspectives on Rhetoric, Authorship, and Narrative."  Fribourg, November 17, 2022.  Invited Speakers:  Prof. Jim Phelan (The Ohio State University) and Prof. Ingo Berensmeyer (University of Munich)
  • Treasurer, Swiss Association for North American Studies (SANAS), January 2022 –
  • Member, Search committee for Professor of Modern English Literature, U. of Fribourg, Fall 2021 / Spring 2022
  • Discussion evening with Fribourg students about the American elections, organized and invited by the English Fachschaft, TEAMS, December 7, 2020
  • Four live interview segments (total 22 minutes) on RadioFreiburg on the U.S. Presidential Elections, November 4, 2020
  • Online visit to Gaetan Maret's high school class on Career Day, October 1, 2020
  • Reader / Evaluator for Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2020, 2021, 2022
  • Outside evaluator of doctoral thesis on Gjertrud Schnackenberg, by Alexandra Kraeva, U. of Mulhouse. February 3, 2020
  • Co-organizer for swissuniversities-sponsored one-day workshop entitled “Transnational Conversations”. Multilingual Writing and Cultural Exchange in Europe and the Americas. Guest: Dr. Jennifer Reimer, U. of Graz. December 6, 2019
  • "Expert" and "Examiner" on Federal Matura Exams in English conducted by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation. Fall 2019, Spring 2020, ongoing.
  • Served on Habilitation Committee for Dr. Sonja Klimek, Department of German, Fall 2019
  • Served on Dissertation Committee for Sebastian Imoberdorf, Identidades múltiples -- Hibridismo cultural y social en la narrativa hispanounidense de los siglos XX y XXI, November 2019
  • Organizer, Swiss European Mobility Exchange visit by Dr. Snezana Vuletic, LMU München, for multiple guest lectures. "Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun" and "An Introduction to Postcolonial Criticism." November 11-15, 2019
  • Radio Interview conducted by Valentin Brügger of Radio Freiburg with Prof. Austenfeld, on the occasion of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's visit to the University, November 14, 2019
  • Organizer, Guest Lecture by Zoe Boekbinder, New Orleans, "The Folsom Prison Project," October 29, 2019
  • Member, Search committee for Full Professor of English Literature, U. of Fribourg, Fall 2019
  • Organizer, Guest Lecture by Dr. Sascha Pöhlmann, U. of Konstanz, "Walt Whitman and Future-Founding Poetry," October 22, 2019
  • Member, Search committee for Full Professor of Spanish Literature, U. of Fribourg, Fall 2019
  • Co-organizer, with Patrizia Zanella, of CUSO Workshop, Literary Texts and Legal Epistemologies in North American Indigenous Studies.  Guest: Prof. Jill Doerfler, Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota-Duluth.
  • Radio interview on "Echo der Zeit" (SRF) on the death of Toni Morrison. Tuesday, August 6, 2019, 18:00h.
  • Served as Secretary-General and Treasurer to IAUPE, The International Association of University Professors of English, from August 1, 2013 to July 31, 2019
  • Discussant, International Whitman Week, Liberal Studies, New York University, May 27-June 1, 2019. Organized by Prof. Karen Karbiener.
  • Hosted Mariam Taha, Cairo University, for a 6-month dissertation research stay.
  • Organizer, Guest lectures by Prof. Frank Mehring, Radboud University, Nijmegen.  “Confessin’ the Blues: Sonic Life Writing” and “The Weary Blues: Remediating the Literary Harlem Renaissance in Visual Culture.” May 6 and 7, 2019.
  • Head, Department of English, University of Fribourg.  Elected for term from January 2019 to July 2021.
  • Organizer, CUSO Workshop for Doctoral Candidates. "American Literature and the Archive." Guest: Prof. Randall Fuller, Herman Melville Distinguished Chair of 19th Century Literature, University of Kansas.  Fribourg, April 12-13, 2018.
  • Senior Editor (Southern Literature), Editorial Board, Oxford Research Encyclopedia Literature, 2015-2019.  http://oxfordre.com/literature/page/editorial/editorial-board
  • Spring 2018, External Member of a Promotion Commission, University of Basel
  • Organizer, "The Sacred Word," Poetry event with Don Paterson and Marie-Elsa Bragg. Fribourg, March 15, 2018.
  • Convener and Director, "Beyond the Alps: Robert Lowell in Europe. The Centennial Conference."  March 30 – April 2, 2017. Supporting Grants received from the Forschungspool der Universität Freiburg, the Schweizerische Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, and the Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation SBFI.
  • Coordinator, weekend seminar visit by Prof. Mathilde Roza, Radboud University Nijmegen, November 2016. “Teaching The Orenda.”
  • 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018: Commentator on American Presidential and Midterm Elections, Radio Fribourg (francophone).
  • Coordinator, Fulbright Senior Scholar Visitor Prof. Richard Kopley, Pennsylvania State University emeritus, guest lecturer and researcher in Fribourg September 25-October 13, 2016.
  • Chair, Struktur- und Berufungskommission "Islamische Studien" in der Philosophischen Fakultät und dem Schweizerischen Zentrum für Islam und Gesellschaft, Fribourg, March-December, 2016.  
  • Coordinator, guest lecture by Prof. Mita Banerjee, Mainz University, December 2015. "Naturalism and Naturalization."
  • Host and organizer (with Patrizia Zanella) of SANAS Mini-Conference, "American Earth: Ecocriticism and American Studies," November 2015, Fribourg. Keynote speakers: Prof. Scott Slovic, University of Idaho and Prof. Alexa Weik von Mossner, University of Klagenfurt.
  • President of the Department of Languages and Literature, July 2015 – June 2017.
  • Sponsor, Three-months' research visit by Ieva Stoncikaite, doctoral student from the Universitat de Lleida, fall 2015. "Erica Jong and Aging."
  • Coordinator, guest lecture by Prof. Jiri Flajsar, Palacky University, Olomouc, May 2015. "Suburbia from Novel to Film."
  • Coordinator, weekend seminar visit by Prof. Hans Bak, Radboud University Nijmegen, April 2015. "Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return."
  • Sponsor, Three-months' research visit to the English department by Dr. Federico Bellini, Università Cattolica, Milano, spring 2015. "Melville's Novels."
  • Coordinator, guest lecture by Prof. Larry Howe, Roosevelt University Chicago and Distinguished Fulbright Scholar at Syddansk U., Denmark, March 3, 2015. "Power and Primitivism in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones."
  • Participant, SSASA Symposium 2014, "New Writing, New Voice, New Directions." Salzburg, Schloss Leopoldskron, September 27-October 1, 2014.
  • Delegate of the Humanities Faculty to the Professorial Plenary of the University of Fribourg, August 2014-June, 2016
  • "Rapporteur," Subcommittee of Horizon 2020, tasked with reimagining Faculty Governance, 2014-2105
  • President, "Kommission Katholische Seelsorge," August 2013- June 2016
  • Member, search committee for Professor of Modern History (francophone), spring 2014
  • Member, search committee for Professor of German Literature, 2013-2014
  • Taught "American Short Stories" as part of a Continuing Education event, February 12, 2014
  • "Responsable du domaine Anglais"/ Head of English Department, July 2013-June 2015
  • Coordinator, guest lecture by Prof. Kathy Lou Schultz, University of Memphis, October 8, 2013. "The Harlem Renaissance."
  • October 2013, Member of an invited vice-rectoral commission to evaluate the work of the Faculty of Letters, University of Lausanne
  • Coordinator, Visit by American poet Dana Gioia to the University of Fribourg, April 27-30, 2013. Funding for this visit provided in part by the Fondation Jan Michalski, Montricher, Switzerland.
  • Host Mentor for a SCIEX project on writer Gary Shteyngart, conducted by Dr. Enikö Maior (Partium University, Oradea, Romania) at the University of Fribourg, January 15-July 15, 2013.
  • Coordinator, Guest lecture by Prof. Peter Barry, Aberystwyth University. "Poems in Chains: Conversations Among American Poems." Fribourg, September 25, 2012.
  • Coordinator, Guest lecture by His Excellency, the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland, Donald S. Beyer, Jr. "American elections and the role of the media." May 3, 2012.
  • Co-organizer (with Boris Vejdovsky, Lausanne) of the CUSO seminar, "Aesthetics and Politics; Or, What's Entitled to be Beautiful Today?", March 22-23, 2012, Crêt-Bérard.
  • Organizer (with Brigitte Zaugg, Metz) of the EAAS workshop # 14, "Physical Hygiene, Mental Health, and the Growth of a Nation: Literature in the Service of Advancing America," Izmir, March 30-April 2, 2012.
  • Coordinator, Guest lecture by Prof. Meg Tyler, Boston University. "The State of the American Lyric in the 21st Century." Cosponsored by the Fulbright Commission. March 15, 2012.

 

  • Dean, Faculty of Humanities (Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines / Philosophische Fakultät), the largest academic division within the University of Fribourg, comprising areas of study in Languages and Literatures (French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, Latin and Greek, Multilingualism), Ancient / Medieval / Modern / Contemporary History, European Studies, Archaeology, Art History, Musicology, Philosophy, Social Sciences and Social Work, Education, Special Education and Speech Therapy, Psychology), elected to a two-year term from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011, with all duties thereunto appertaining: Lead six faculty meetings (a body composed of about 140 elected members representing approx. 80 professors, 250 scientific collaborators, 4000+ students) per academic year in German; lead biweekly deans' council meetings in French; lead regular sessions of the council of department presidents; develop and oversee administrative policies for the faculty and implement them within the University; plan and coordinate educational and fiscal policy of the dean's office and represent the faculty vis-à-vis the Rectorate and the administrative arm of the University; organize structural and search committees for new and vacant posts; chair all German-speaking search committees (French-speaking committees are chaired by appropriate francophone vice-deans); chair dissertation defenses and "Habilitation" presentations in German or English; bestow doctoral degrees and titles of "Privatdozent"; approve and sign by hand all diplomas, awards, and admission letters sent out by the Faculty; lead multilingual diploma and graduation ceremonies three times per year; welcome conferences across the disciplines within the Faculty; assure continuous functioning of the faculty during intersemesters. <http://lettres.unifr.ch/fr/faculte/decanat.html>

 

  • Spring 2011, External Member of a Promotion Commission, University of Lausanne
  • Coordinator, Fulbright Senior Scholar Visitor Prof. Eric Carl Link, University of Memphis, guest lecturer and researcher in Fribourg April 3 – May 13, 2011.
  • Co-organizer (with Prof. Jens Herlth and Prof. Dimiter Daphinoff) of the international conference "Terrorism through the Lens of Literary Epistemology: Historical Imagination and Narrative Practice," Fribourg, December 2-4, 2010, co-sponsored by the SNF, the Staatssekretariat für Bildung und Forschung, and the Rectorate of the University of Fribourg.
  • Coordinator, Guest Lecture by visiting scholar, Prof. Diederik Oostdijk, Free University Amsterdam, November 10, 2010, with a presentation on "American Poetry of the Vietnam War."
  • Invited Panelist, CRUS Conference, "Qualität der Forschung in den Geisteswissenschaften," Zürich, October 27-28, 2010.
  • Participant, Salzburg Global Seminar (SSASAA), "To Honor Emory Elliott: American Literary History in a New Key," September 24-27, 2010, Schloss Leopoldskron Salzburg.
  • (Ongoing): serve as manuscript reader for Great Plains Quarterly, Mosaic, PMLA, L'Analisi linguistica e letteraria (Milano), and the University of Alabama Press.
  • Coordinator, Guest Lecture by visiting scholar, Prof. Jewel Spears Brooker, Eckerd College, May 25-27, 2010, with a presentation on the early work of T.S. Eliot. Co-sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, Bern.
  • Participant, Salzburg Global Seminar (SSASAA), "Globalization and American Popular Culture," September 25-28, 2009, Schloss Leopoldskron Salzburg.
  • Coordinator, Guest Lecture by visiting scholar, Prof. Sandra Spanier, Pennsylvania State University, on September 15, 2009. Co-sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, Bern.
  • Coordinator, Guest Lecture by visiting poet and publisher, Paul Tayyar, on March 17, 2009. Sponsored by SANAS.
  • Coordinator, Guest Lecture by Visiting Fulbright Professor of American Studies, Michael A. Rozendal, on February 17, 2009. Sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, Bern.
  • Participant, Salzburg Global Seminar (SSASAA), "Transnationalism and Immigration Shock in American Society and Literature," October 30-November 2, 2008, Schloss Leopoldskron Salzburg.
  • Member, Commission "30+" for examination and admission of students without High School "maturité" exam.
  • Co-organizer (with Agnieszka Soltysik and Patrick Vincent) of the SANAS Conference 2008, "Writing American Women: Text, Gender, Performance" and the Troisième Cycle Colloquium, "Disciplinary Formations" at Crêt-Bérard, November 13-15, 2008.
  • Member, Commission de structure et d'appel, Sciences de l'Antiquité, Fall 2008.
  • Member, Academic Board of the American College Program, Fribourg (ongoing).
  • Awarded € 1400 in print subvention support by the "Commission des Publications, Conseil de l'Université Fribourg," May 2008, for Kay Boyle for the Twenty-First Century.
  • Member, Strukturkommission Germanistik, Summer/Fall 2008.
  • Member, Groupe Pilotage, "Restructuration de la Faculté des Lettres," 2008-2009.
  • Visit to the University of Mississippi for the purpose of negotiating an exchange agreement, April 2008.
  • Panel moderator, "Master Evening," February 28, 2008.
  • Session Organizer, Kay Boyle Society, American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 2008.
  • Member, "Commission des Règlements," 2007-2008
  • Member, Commission on "Leitbild / Charte" of the Faculty of Philosophy, 2007-2008.
  • Convener, Kay Boyle Business Meeting, ALA Boston May 2007, ALA San Francisco May 2008.
  • Chaired Western American Literature Association meeting, "Things That Go Boom: Sites of Trauma in the American West," at ALA, Boston, May 2007.
  • Negotiated exchange agreement between University of Fribourg and North Georgia College & State University, May 2007.
  • Outside specialist, Matura Exams Collège Gambach, June 2007, June 2008.
  • Chair, Western Literature Association Panel at the ALA Boston, May 2007.
  • Host and organizer of SANAS "Reading Group" (Will Kaufmann) in Fribourg, April 27, 2007.
  • Examiner and "Assesseur" on oral exams, Spring 2007, Fall 2007, Spring 2008.
  • Occasional Organist, University Chapel, 2006-2007.
  • Hosted Thanksgiving dinner for exchange students, November 2006. 
  • Exchange Program Coordinator (assisted by Dr. Alexa Weik v. Mossner, 2009-2012) for Fribourg-Arizona, Fribourg-Mississippi, Fribourg-Omaha student exchanges.

 

North Georgia College & State University (July 2000-August 2006)

Honors & Awards

  • Commencement Speaker, North Georgia College & State University Summer Commencement, August 11, 2006
  • Named Alumni Distinguished Professor 2006 by North Georgia College & State University Alumni Association
  • Received "Excellence in Teaching Award for Developing Critical Thinking," February 2006
  • Honored as "Faculty Member of the Year 2004/2005" by NGCSU Student Government Association, April 2005
  • Inducted into ODK National Leadership Honor Society, NGCSU Circle, November 2004
  • Member, Editorial Board of Honores, the NGCSU Undergraduate Honors Magazine
  • Member, Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society)
  • Member, Pi Phi (French Honor Society)

Committees

  • Chair, Intellectual Property Policy Committee, 2005/06
  • Member, Faculty Affairs Committee, 2005/06
  • Member, Senate ad-hoc Committee on Departmental Promotion and Tenure policies, 2005/06
  • Elected to NGCSU Faculty Senate, AY 05/06
  • Member, Search Committee for Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Spring 2005
  • Member and Subcommittee chair, "Compliance Team" for SACS Review at NGCSU, 2005, 2006
  • Member, Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment Committee, 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06
  • Elected Member, Dispute Resolution Committee 2003/04
  • Member, Search Committee for Assistant Professor of Philosophy, AY 2004/2005
  • Member, Grade Appeals Committee, AY 2004/2005
  • Member, Military Committee, AY 2004/05
  • Chair, University System of Georgia BOR Advisory Committee on English (Jan 04-Jan 05)
  • Organizer, BOR English Committee Conference at Unicoi State Park, January 2005
  • Member, Search Committee for Assistant Professor of History, 2003/04
  • Departmental Coordinator for Foundation Fund Drive, 2003/04, 2004/05
  • Member, Senate ad-hoc Committee on Promotion and Tenure Procedures and Policies, Spring/Summer 2004
  • Compiler, "Initial Matrix" for NCATE/PSC portfolio in English Education
  • Member, Departmental Composition Committee, 2003/04, 2004/05
  • Member, Search Committee for Dean of Arts and Letters, 2002/03
  • Member, Search Committee for Assistant Professor of Philosophy, 2002/03

Activities

  • Faculty Advisor to International Students' Association, NGCSU, AY 2004/2005, 2005/06
  • Teaching Portfolio Evaluator, Department of Teacher Education, NGCSU, Spring 2004, Spring 2005
  • Compiler, Comprehensive Program Review for English 2003/04
  • Organized screening of German film for International Studies Week, 10/03
  • Member, NGCSU Leadership Roundtable
  • Participant in Dr. Jack Broman's "Holiday Choir" NGCSU, December 2001, 2002, 2005
  • Translator of German song texts for choir programs and individual vocalists at NGCSU.
  • Participant in a language immersion program at the Centro de Lenguas Modernas / Universidad de Granada (Spain), supported by a scholarship administered through Kennesaw University, July 2003. 
  • Served as Department Head of Language and Literature for 3 full academic years (July 2000-June 2003).
  • Participant in NGCSU's study abroad program in Santander, Spain, July 2002.  Obtained "Diploma de Lengua Española, Nivel Medio" granted by the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.
  • Brief invited address to the Faculty of Arts and Letters on the question, "Why Liberal Arts?"  August 15, 2002.
  • "Master of Ceremonies" at Foreign Language Day Bowl Competition, asking questions in four languages. 2002, 2003, 2004.
  • Co-facilitator of Faculty Retreat on "Ethical Decision-Making," September 2002.
  • Introductory Speaker at Faculty Retreat, Sept. 13, 2002: "Why Should We Care About Ethics?"
  • Served as chief writer for Comprehensive Program Review in Spanish, mandated by the Board of Regents, 2002.
  • Served as chief writer for Comprehensive Program Review in French, mandated by the Board of Regents, Fall 2001-Spring 2002.
  • Presented discussion materials on "small words" at English Department Teaching Circle, November 13, 2001.
  • Presented "How Can We Balance Scholarship and Life?" at the Departmental Faculty Research Colloquium, April 10, 2001.
  • Presented "When Do We Want our Students to Study?" to the English Department Teaching Circle, March 20, 2001.
  • Participated in multiple hiring committees for English and Foreign Language positions, 2000-2003.
  • Initiated and conducted discussion group of Creating Campus Community for departmental faculty, AY 2002/03.
  • Presented "Caught vs. Taught: An Analysis of the Difference Between What We Teach And What Students Learn" to the NGCSU faculty as part of the Faculty Development Workshops, February 27, 2001.
  • Served as departmental / University liaison (2001) to BOR Advisory Committee on English and (2002) as Member of the Committee's Executive Council.
  • Led Panel Discussion of Mentor Group at Faculty Retreat, April 6, 2001, on "The Scholarship of Teaching."
  • Initiated and conducted mentor reading / discussion group of Ernest Boyers' Scholarship Reconsidered for recently hired faculty 2000/2001.
  • Initiated Faculty Research Colloquium, AY 2000/2001.
  • Oversaw installation of new Language Lab, Summer 2000
  • Initiated and conducted mentor reading / discussion group of Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach for departmental faculty, AY 2001/02.
  • Sponsored poetry-writing event for faculty and staff children on Family Day.

Extramural Work

  • Chair and Co-Founder, Kay Boyle Society, established at American Literature Association conference in San Francisco, May 2006.
  • Chaired session on "Philosophical Approaches in Post-War German Literature" at the 20th Century Literature Conference in Louisville, KY, February 2005
  • Chair, Katherine Anne Porter session at American Literature Association Conference, May 2005, Boston
  • Chaired session on "Absurd Modernism: Futurism, Dadaism, and the Avant-Garde" at the 20th Century Literature Conference in Louisville, KY, Feb 26-28, 2004.
  • Served annually as Regents' essay rater. 
  • Served as reader and evaluator for Don D. Walker essay award (Western American Literature).
  • Served as rater for ESL essays administered by Learning Support Programs, developed rating rubric
  • Chair, session on "Writing California: Kinesis, Entropy, and All States in Between," at the Western Literature Association Conference, Omaha, October 2001.

Various Activities at Drury College / University, 1991-2000

  • Chair, Strategic Planning Committee for strengthening academic programs at Drury, AY 99/00
  • Co-chair and secretary, "Criterion I Committee" for North Central Accreditation, Drury College, AY 99/00
  • Chair, Katherine Anne Porter session at American Literature Association Conference, Long Beach, CA, May 2000
  • Chair, "Western Poetry" at Western American Literature Association Conference, Sacramento, October 1999
  • Chair, "Natives and Borders" at Western American Literature Association Conference, Banff, October 1998
  • Bibliographic Editor, Western American Literature, 1995-1998
  • Director of the Drury College Convocation Program, August 1994 - December 1997
  • Chair, "Writing Texas" at Western American Literature Association Conference, Albuquerque, October 1997
  • Elected Member of Executive Council, Western Literature Association, 1997-2000
  • Planned and Co-directed "Theatre in London," based at Regent's College, for May term 1996 and Winter term 1999

 

 Earlier Awards and Recognitions

 

 Teaching Experience - North Georgia College & State University 2000-2006

 

  • American Literature II
  • American Literature II delivered as eCore® class for the University System of Georgia
  • Literature of the American West (joint graduate enrollment)
  • World Literature I
  • World Literature II
  • British Literature I
  • Composition I
  • Composition II
  • Literary Research and Writing
  • Senior Seminar English
  • Introduction to Ethics (as guest instructor in the Department of Psychology and Sociology)
  • Continuing Education class: Fun and Learning with Greek and Latin

Teaching Experience - Drury University 1991-2000 (formerly Drury College)

 

  •   Freshmen Studies I and II (Western Intellectual and Literary History / multiple sections 1991-1994)
  •   Alpha Seminar: The American Experience (year-long class / multiple sections 1995 -present)
  •   American Literature and Culture I:  Beginnings to 1865
  •   American Literature and Culture II: 1865-Present (multiple)
  •   Questions of Values in American Literature (interdisciplinary / multiple sections)
  •   Major British Authors (Survey Class) (multiple)
  •   Restoration and Romantic Literature
  •   Fall 1999: Restoration and Romantic Literature taught online
  •   Victorian and Modern British Literature [multiple]
  •   Fundamentals of Composition (multiple)
  •   Senior Seminar English : Literary Theory / Scholarly Identity (multiple)
  •   Honors Seminar: American Intellectual Prose
  •   Honors Seminar: Literature and Politics
  •   Honors Seminar: Love, Freedom, and Responsibility in Dante and Eliot
  •   Honors Seminar: Myths of the American West (team-taught with a faculty colleague from the Department of Political Science)
  •   Seminar: Southern Literature (multiple)
  •   Seminar: Poetry (multiple)
  •   Seminar: Shakespeare (multiple)
  •   19th and 20th Century British Novels (multiple)
  •   English as a Second Language
  •   Seminar: Cather and Dreiser
  •   Directed Study: German Literary History
  •   Directed Study: John Updike
  •   Directed Study: Native American Literature
  •   Land and Literature of the American West (in cooperation with the Environmental Studies Program)
  •   Living Writers
  •   British Theatre [at Regent's College, London; May, 1996 and January, 1999].



 

Liberty Fund Conferences  (1996-2001)    

  • Discussant. Love and Freedom in the Poetry of Dante and T.S. Eliot.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Jewel Spears Brooker.  Clearwater FL, Nov 14-17, 1996.
  • Discussant. Liberty and Responsibility in the Works of Søren Kierkegaard.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Stephen A. Erickson.  Pasadena CA, Nov 6-9, 1997.
  • Discussant. Liberty and Empire in Shakespeare's History Plays.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Randy Simmons.  Tucson AZ,  Jan 22-25, 1998.
  • Discussant. Value Pluralism: Plato, Machiavelli, Isaiah Berlin.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Stephen A. Erickson.  Pasadena CA, March 26-29, 1998.
  • Discussant. Liberty in the Prose and Poetry of John Milton.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Glenn Arbery.  Dallas TX, April 23-26, 1998.
  • Discussant. Liberty and Struggle in Virgil's Aeneid.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Robert McMahon. Baton Rouge LA, September 10-13, 1998.
  • Discussant. Joseph Pieper on the Human Condition.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Timothy Fuller.  Clearwater FL, November 5-8, 1998.
  • Discussant. The Expression of Transcendence in St. Augustine's City of God.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Timothy Fuller.  Clearwater, FL, January 21-24, 1999.
  • Discussant. The Struggle for Liberty in Goethe's Faust. Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Inger Brodey.  Colorado Springs, CO, March 23-26, 2000.
  • Conference co-chair and co-discussion leader. Liberty and Education in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, co-directed by Timothy Fuller.  Denver, Colorado, June 22-25, 2000.
  • Discussant. The Problem of Evil in Milton's Paradise Lost.  Conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, directed by Timothy Fuller.  Stowe VT, May 2001.

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