English Department

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D., American Literature, University of Virginia, 2004
Dissertation (Directed by Jennifer Wicke, Jerome McGann, Thomas McHaney, Franny Nudelman, and Edward Ayers): Inescapable Earth: William Faulkner, Yoknapatawpha, and the Book of Nature

B.A., English (Highest Honors) and Spanish (Honors), University of California, Davis, 1997

Teaching Experience

Department of English, University of North Florida, Fall, 2003-Present

Undergraduate: LIT 2110: “Introduction to Literature” (5 sections); LIT 2932: “Themes and Types in Literature,” subtitled “Wild Encounters: Uncaging the Beast in Modern Literature and Film” (5 sections); IDH 2935: “Honors Seminar,” also subtitled “Wild Encounters” (1 section); AML 3041: “Periods of Later American Literature,” subtitled “Placing American Literature” (7 sections); LIT 4934: “Senior Seminar,” subtitled “Faulkner and His Children” (1 section).

Upper Division Undergraduate/Graduate: LIT 4930/5934: “Faulkner and Film” (2 sections); LIT 4930/5934: “American Environmental Writing and Ecocriticism” (2 sections); LIT 4990/5990: “Wild Encounters: Uncaging the Beast in Modern Literature and Film” (1 section).  

Department of English, University of Virginia, Fall, 1998-Spring, 2003

Undergraduate: “Introduction to the Study of Literature” (1 section); “Studies in the Novel” (1 section); “Academic Writing I” (2 sections); “Academic Writing 2” (1 section); “Accelerated Academic Writing” (3 sections); “Advanced Academic Writing” (1 section); “Advanced Academic and Business Writing” (1 section); “Public Speaking and Oral Traditions” (5 sections).

Related Experience

The Walt Whitman Archive/Department of Special Collections, University of Virginia, Fall, 2002-Spring, 2003

Editorial assistant. Responsibilities included: creating an EAD (Encoded Archival Description) guide to the University of Virginia’s Whitman holdings for the use of Special Collections patrons and online Whitman Archive visitors; serving as liaison between Special Collections staff and Whitman Archive editors in other states; assisting in the preservation and physical ordering of unique Whitman manuscript and print materials.

Department of Special Collections, University of Virginia, Spring, 1998-Fall, 2002

Graduate rare books cataloguing assistant. Created and edited online records for books and periodicals within the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, the Paul Mellon Bequest (rare Virginiana and Americana), the Warren Chappell Library (art, typography, book design), the Belmead Plantation Library (early nineteenth-century British and American imprints), the Joseph C. Cabell Purchase (early Southern pamphlets), the Brenda Forman Collection of Pop-Up and Movable Books, the Bruccoli-Bailey Great War Collection, and other collections.

Publications

Journal Articles

“‘A Peculiar Kind of Intimacy’: Men, Nature, and the Unnatural in Dickey’s ‘The Sheep Child’ and Deliverance” [expanded version].  James Dickey Newsletter 23 (2006): 27-41.

“‘Squeal Like a Pig’: Manhood, Wilderness, and Imperialist Nostalgia in John Boorman’s Deliverance.”  Green Letters 6 (2005): 24-38.

“A Meeting with Old Ben: Seeing and Writing Nature in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses.”  Mississippi Quarterly 55 (2002): 461-96 [Lead article]. 

“In Praise of the Black Mother: An Unpublished Faulkner Letter on ‘Mammy’ Caroline Barr.”  The Georgia Review 55 (2001): 536-42. 

“More News from Faulkner’s Library.”  Mississippi Quarterly 53 (2000): 583-89.

“Faulkner’s Library Revisited.”  Mississippi Quarterly 52 (1999): 365-420 [Lead article].  

Book Chapters

“Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman,” in Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, and Nature.  Ed. Sid Dobrin and Sean Morey.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007 [forthcoming]. 

“Beyond Grief and Rage: Reinhabitory Discourse, Domesticity, and Wild[er]ness in the Work of Janisse Ray.”  Forthcoming in proceedings volume of the 2005 Conference on Communication and Environment (Wilderness, Advocacy, and the Media).  

“‘A Peculiar Kind of Intimacy’: Men, Nature, and the Unnatural in James Dickey’s ‘The Sheep Child’ and Deliverance.”  Conflict in Southern Writing.  Ed. Ben P. Robertson.  Proc. of a Conference on Conflict in Southern Writing.  24-26 Sep. 2004.  Troy, Ala.: Assoc. for Textual Study and Production/Troy University, 2006.  21-33.       

“One Wild Word: Leap and the Art of Restoration.”  Surveying the Literary Landscapes of Terry Tempest Williams: New Critical Essays.  Ed. Katherine Chandler and Melissa Goldthwaite.  Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003.  153-74.

“Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory, by Cary Wolfe.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 12.1 (2005): 280-82.

“Faulkner and the Politics of Reading, by Karl Zender.”  Mississippi Quarterly 55 (2002): 447-49.   

Conferences and Workshops

“Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman.”  Panel: “Economies and Geographies of Desire.”  Conference: Kindred Spirits, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., September 8, 2006.

“‘They Are Not to Lose It’: Faulkner, García Márquez, and the Politics of Amnesia” [panel paper]. Conference: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2006 (Global Faulkner), University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss., July 24, 2006.

“‘Kill or Go Hongry’”: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the Appetitive View of Landscape.”  Conference: 2006 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society Meeting, Winter Park, Fl., April 8, 2006.

“Mapping Literature: Cartographic Textuality and the Geographical Imagination in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!” (with Craig Warren of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College).  Panel (organized by Welling and Warren): “Literature and the Cartographic Imagination in America.”  Conference: 2005 New England American Studies Association Meeting (Sight Lines: On the Culture and Science of Vision), American Antiquarian Society and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass., September 24, 2005. 

“Beyond Grief and Rage: Reinhabitory Discourse, Domesticity, and Wild[er]ness in the Work of Janisse Ray.”  Panel (organized by Welling, and including papers by Nancy Levine and Kathy Hassall of UNF): “‘A Wilderness Misunderstood’: Janisse Ray’s Southern Vision of Wilderness Advocacy.”  Conference: 2005 Conference on Communication and Environment (Wilderness, Advocacy, and the Media), sponsored by the University of Georgia, Jekyll Island, Ga., June 24, 2005.

“Killing the Panther: The Tropics of Endangerment in Linda Hogan’s Power and Contemporary America.”  Panel: “Historicizing the Question of the Animal.”  Conference: Annual meeting of the Society for Literature and Science, sponsored by Duke University, Durham, N. C., October 15, 2004.  

“‘A Peculiar Kind of Intimacy’: Men, Nature, and the Unnatural in James Dickey’s ‘The Sheep-Child’ and Deliverance.”  Panel: “Violent Southern Men.”  Conference: “Conflict in Southern Writing,” sponsored by Troy University, Montgomery, Ala., September 25, 2004.

"Faulkner and the Book of Nature." Panel: "William Faulkner." Conference: Annual meeting of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, Atlanta, Ga., October 25, 2003.

"The Textual Ecology of Yoknapatawpha" [panel paper]. Conference: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2003 (Faulkner and the Ecology of the South), University of Mississippi, July 20-24, 2003.

"Sustainable Dilemmas: Thomas Hardy and Ecocriticism." Presented at roundtable session on ecocriticism, Graduate English Conference 2002 (Works of Culture, Cultures of Work), University of Virginia, April 12-13, 2002.

Organized and moderated "Close Reading" and "Beyond Close Reading" sessions in the English graduate student pedagogy series (Introduction to the Teaching of Literature), University of Virginia, November 16 and 28, 2001.

"The Cat and the Croker Sack: Or, The Nature of William Faulkner’s South." Conference: Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Symposium on the South (Coming Nearer the Ground), University of Mississippi, October 25-27, 2001.

University Service and Community Involvement

University of North Florida, Summer 2003-Present

Environmental Conflict Resolution Exercise                                 
Fall, 2005-Present

Faculty coordinator.  Worked with Ray Bowman, David Lambert, and Abby Murphy of the UNF Environmental Center, along with Diane Kerr (Chair, Northwest Citizens Planning Advisory Committee) and a wide range of other community leaders and city officials, to involve over fifty students in UNF’s first role-playing simulation of a public policy meeting designed to solve an environmental conflict.  Designed roles and rules of the simulation; coordinated information meeting and tour of Forest Street incinerator site; designed evaluation tools and Blackboard site; coordinated simulation exercise.           

Environmental Center Academic Initiative Task Force                
Fall, 2005-Present

Member. Helped plan new majors and minors to be offered through the Environmental Center; helped design needs assessment survey of area businesses and governmental agencies.  

Great Decisions/International Crisis Management Exercise     
Spring, 2005-Present

Faculty advisor.  Facilitated Great Decisions discussions using materials designed by the Foreign Policy Association on “Public Diplomacy,” “Outsourcing Jobs: U.S. Dilemma,” “China: Economic Giant Emerges,” “Russia Re-examined,” “Iraq and the Middle East,” and other topics at Stanton College Preparatory School (Jacksonville); led discussion on “The Media and Foreign Policy” at UNF.  Served as advisor during first International Crisis Management Exercise (Spring, 2005) and played role of “U.S. President” during Spring, 2006 Exercise (both sponsored by the Jacksonville World Affairs Council), in which local high school students and UNF students play U.S. Cabinet members responding to international crises.

M.A. Exam Committees and Other Service, English Department    
Fall, 2004-Present

Chaired or otherwise participated in five M.A. exam committees for graduate students; directed four Independent Study courses; wrote numerous letters of recommendation for students at all levels.   

Undergraduate Committee, English Department                                   
Fall, 2003-Present

Member. Worked with other members to design a new departmental Academic Learning Compact; also worked on assessment tools and goals for senior seminars; based on student recommendations, proposed new class, “Introduction to Literary Studies,” for incoming English majors. 

Special Summer Graduate Program                                           
Summer, 2006

Lecturer. Taught six sessions on writing skills to new graduate students, sponsored by UNF’s Intercultural Center for PEACE; sessions covered the basics of graduate-level argument, style, and APA documentation. 

Freshman Orientation and Advising                                    
Summer, 2004-Summer, 2006

Faculty mentor. Worked with advisers from UNF’s Academic Center for Excellence to help prepare incoming first-year students for their first semester of study.  Met with students in small groups to a) outline UNF’s General Education requirements; b) share ideas on succeeding in college; c) help students on an individual basis to choose and register for their first college classes; d) encourage students to take advantage of transformational learning opportunities at UNF.  Also met with several large groups of parents (Summer, 2006) to discuss UNF’s Academic Integrity Code. 

Lifetime Learning Seminar                                                         
Spring, 2006

Lecturer. Designed seminar titled “Two Souths, New Souths: Literary Dialogue in Our Changing Americas” (with particular emphasis on the literary relationship between Nobel laureates William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez) conducted on March 28, 2006 with Lifetime Learning participants from the Jacksonville community.

QUEST College Writing Classes                                                   
Summer, 2005

Lecturer. Taught eleven sessions on college writing skills to participants in the QUEST program, sponsored by UNF’s Intercultural Center for PEACE; provided incoming first-year students with an introduction to the basics of argument (canons of persuasion; claims; evidence; engaging with alternative arguments; introductions and conclusions; organization) and style.      

Honors, Fellowships, Awards

UNF Environmental Center Faculty Fellowship                               
Spring, 2006-Present

Member, Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi
Spring, 1997-Present      
                  
UNF Office of Faculty Enhancement Faculty Fellowship  
Fall, 2005-Spring, 2006              

UNF Undergraduate Academic Enrichment Intellectual Life Grant (sponsoring visit by poet Ann Fisher-Wirth)             
Spring, 2004    

Mellon Foundation Humanities Dissertation Fellowship, University of Virginia
Summer, 2002

William Faulkner Society scholarship recipient and student representative, 2000 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
Summer, 2000 

Awarded 1997 Leon Mayhew Prize in the College of Letters and Science, University of California, Davis, as one of three outstanding College graduates; finalist for University Medal
Spring, 1997

Languages

Graduate-level fluency in speaking, writing, and reading colloquial and academic Spanish.

Intermediate fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Swedish.

Intermediate reading abilities in French.

Personal

Married Elizabeth Siobhain Murphy November 29, 1997. Children: Autumn Bonnie and Solstice (“Soli”) Linda (December 6, 1998); Orion Jefferson David (March 3, 2001); Chora Belle Dorothy (December 30, 2003).