Area of Study / Keywords

Energy Humanities Cultural Studies Mobility Theory US Literature + Culture

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About

I have a number of research projects ongoing, including a co-authored book on the political philosophy of energy impasse and a book on the postcard craze in the US circa 1900. I am a principal investigator on the Energy Humanities theme in the Future Energy Systems research network at the U of A, and also one of three founding collaborators in EFS on the international research collective After Oil: Explorations and Experiments in the Future of Energy, Culture, and Society. In my spare time, I love to ride my road bike and to make music with my band.

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Research

My ongoing research concerns mobility, material culture, and energy. An Americanist by training, I am happy to work with graduate students on a range of topics in literary and cultural studies, particularly ones focused on aspects of the long American nineteenth century; on popular forms; on labor and class; on the politics of mobility; on petrocultures.

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Teaching

My undergraduate teaching regularly includes courses on American literature from first contact to 1865, American ideologies and technologies, print culture studies and the history of the book, and theories of class and ideology. I have taught graduate seminars on naturalism, new historicism, and new materialism; work and play in postbellum culture; embodiment in revolutionary America; American empire; crises in the US public sphere; culture war and class struggle in America; mobility regimes; maritime modernities; resource aesthetics.

ENGL 358 - American Texts to 1900

Studies in selected American literary and cultural texts (film, media, material objects) to 1900. Prerequisite: *6 of junior English, or *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102.

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ENGL 583 - Cultural Studies

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Browse more courses taught by Mark Simpson

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