The beat generation has been examined as a social movement, literary period, and political statement from many different scholarly perspectives. Through the method of rhetorical criticism I tease out an implicit theory of rhetoric from the writings of the principal beat generation founders—namely Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Offering a r…[Read more]

This essay explores the meaning of Kenneth Burke’s notion of the “poetic corrective” from his book Permanence and Change by examining the ideas of William Carlos Williams, a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent with Burke. Williams’s poetry is also examined as a potential model for the “poetic corrective,” which I suggest is what Burke might…[Read more]

Draft

This essay examines the uneasy relationship that Arturo Islas’s The Rain God has had with narratives of identity, focusing on how the representation of Felix’s sexuality makes him a problematic figure for certain strains of Chicana/o and queer studies. In other writings, Islas criticizes Quinto Sol, the chief publishing house of Chicano literature…[Read more]

Introduction to the edited volume Bridges, Borders, and Breaks: History, Narrative, and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Chicana/o Literary Criticism.

Lecture/class notes on Modernism. I’m sharing my teaching notes (rough) for works that may be helpful to others and are widely taught.

Lecture/class notes on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m sharing my teaching notes (rough) for works that may be helpful to others and are widely taught.

Lecture/class notes on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” I’m sharing my teaching notes (rough) for works that may be helpful to others and are widely taught.