Explores Elizabeth Daryush’s “Children of wealth in your warm nursery” as of a narrator visiting us to warn us about our possible ill-fate, if we don’t “escape..” The game for the reader is to decide if she’s to be trusted, or not.

Daphne Marlatt’s “Healing” as a poem about re-cooperating from the infliction of a triggering, caustic word upon one’s mental composition, using efficacy, experience in knowing composure and competency, as a rebutting counter.

Explores how Phyllis Webb’s “To Those Who Have Also Considered Suicide” is a poem which mischievously induces the reader to become one of the “friends” who undergo the “initiation” of suicide. The reader is encouraged to let go any grievance, however, in consideration of the poet’s successful demonstration of the initiation as involving genuine…[Read more]

Explores a clip of “Blade Runner” as if it were an artifice for suggesting means by which we might find meaning, purpose, in our own world. Decker as extension of ourselves, experimenting, failing… but ultimately succeeding, to discover purpose that is palpable to many of us, in a world we find actively seeking to degrade the possibility of it.

Explores the ability of the narrator to be honest with the difficulties — not displace, repress, elide/evade concerns — they had in their mother-child relationship, in several works of literature, including Cocteau’s “Les Enfants Terribles,” Alice Munro’s “Lives of Girls and Women.” and Andrea Ashworth’s “Once in a House on Fire.”

Explores how “Ode to a Grecian Urn” reads as a discovery of the discovery for the poet of the importance of an object, not primarily as something he might master, but something he submits to. Story of the withdrawal of status, and re-projection of “art,” status, onto an object, after brief experience of the effects of being abandoned its authority.

This study focuses on the cultural history of illegitimacy and its representation in literature, with an emphasis on the gender of fictional bastards and foundlings.

Exploration of how “Silas Marner” is George Eliot’s means to distinguish herself from those who are truly guilty of abandoning parental mores… ancestors, parents, themselves. An argument is made that the reason for the text is as provision for the author to temporarily relieve herself of guilt.

How and why do we read? And what is the relationship between academic reading and the reading we do for pleasure? This course is divided into two parts. The first part, on critical reading, surveys some of the most influential critical approaches in recent decades, including structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism,…[Read more]

Full collection of essays written during my undergraduate and graduate studies in literature.

This article examines the ways that geohumanities approaches historical research aids in the study of environmental and urban history in one of the twentieth century’s fastest growing American urban centers. It explores how San Jose typified the challenges of Silicon Valley’s rapid urbanization and desire to chart a new form of industrialisation…[Read more]

Graduate-level syllabus for a seminar in the Department of English. Neither “history of the book” nor “media studies,” this course sits somewhere in-between combining the ethos of a makerspace with the hands-on resources of a letterpress and book arts studio.

This thematic session of the journal is devoted to expressions of creative writing inspired by monuments. Our aim is to understand how and why diverse re/constructions of their specific genesis, descriptions of architectural features, explanations of symbolism, histories of mentors, sponsors and artists generate over/interpretations in the form of…[Read more]

Drawing on research in developmental psychology, rhetorical narratology, and cultural history, as well as on digital data mining, this essay seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary and interpretive range of cognitive literary studies.

Drawing on research in developmental psychology, rhetorical narratology, and cultural history, as well as on digital data mining, this essay seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary and interpretive range of cognitive literary studies.

In light of (re)new(ed) interest in focusing interdisciplinary scholarly attention on the history of capitalism – a focus captured in Edward Baptist’s recent book, The Half has Never Been Told – this essay reads Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel A Mercy as a key text for considering the history of capitalism as central to conceptions of circum-…[Read more]

In light of (re)new(ed) interest in focusing interdisciplinary scholarly attention on the history of capitalism – a focus captured in Edward Baptist’s recent book, The Half has Never Been Told – this essay reads Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel A Mercy as a key text for considering the history of capitalism as central to conceptions of circum-…[Read more]

Using qualitative data, including extensive interview material and ethnographic research, to explore the experiences and ideas of African Americans as they confront and construct gentrification, this book aims to contextualize Black Washingtonians’ perspectives on belonging and attachment during a marked period of urban restructuring and d…[Read more]

While acknowledging the difficulties cities face, Leading the Inclusive City mounts a powerful case that cities do have tools at their disposal for ameliorating inequality, advancing social justice, promoting environmental responsibility, and bolstering community empowerment. Susan Marie Martin thinks citizens of all cities will find this book…[Read more]