I am a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies in the Faculty of Arts, and Special Advisor to the Provost as Convenor for Congress 2021.
When I'm not working, which seems like a rare thing these days, I'm all about my children, grandchildren, partner, parents and everyone else in my complicatedly extended family. I love time with friends, food, and fine whisky, literature, film, music, and the visual arts of any kind at any time. I think 1970's Hollywood is the gritty, golden-age of film. My music tastes go to R&B, Funk, Blues, Rock, Alt Country, Folk.
My favourite quote: “The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse.” (The Missouri Breaks 1976)
I teach and publish in the fields of critical and cultural theories with a particular emphasis on deconstruction and psychoanalysis, and my expertise in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on poetry and poetics as a form of material culture studies. My interests in material culture range from sound studies, archive theory, radical poetics, and technologies of writing to the energy humanities and intermedia studies.
I am a Governing Board Member and a member of the UAlberta research team for the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Grant.
I'm very pleased to conduct graduate supervision in any areas related to the above interests. I consider graduate supervision a great privilege and one of the most rewarding aspects of my professional life.
A sample of some recently taught courses:
English 430: The Literary Freud
English 586: In the American Archive
English 694: Archive Pedagogy
English 356: American Technologies
English 208: Reading Histories: Making Books
English 357: Reading American Ideologies
English 679: Derrida Engaged
An introduction to a range of poetic forms, techniques and theories. Prerequisite: *6 of junior English, or *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102.