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HONORS PROGRAM | DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
 
 

 

Professional Appointments                 

                                                                                                                  

Director, Western Oregon University Honors Program (current)

Professor of English, Western Oregon University (current)

President, Faculty Senate, Western Oregon University, 2010-2012

Associate Professor of English, Western Oregon University, 2004-2009

Assistant Professor of English, Western Oregon University, 1999-2004

Teaching and Research Assistant, University of Kentucky, 1989-1999

 

Publications: Books

 

Editor and Intro., Martin Amis: Postmodernism and Beyond.  Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2006. The first collection of original essays published on Amis, this edited collection features the work

of twelve scholars from six different countries.

Father and Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950.  Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 2003. Intertextual analysis of the Amises' novels, essays, and relationship in the contexts of comedy, satire,

realism, and postmodernism. Reissued in paperback, January 2005.  Review essay by Robert S. Baker in

Contemporary Literature 46.3 (fall 2005): 544-54.  Preview available from Google Books.

Flight [novel]. 80,000 word completed manuscript. Currently Unpublished.

 

Publications: Books Chapters, Essays, Miscellaneous

“Kingsley Amis” and “Martin Amis.”  Two articles (2000 words each) for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of

Twentieth-Century Fiction3 Vols.  Eds. Brian Shaffer et al.  Oxford and Boston: Blackwell, 2011.  

“‘No less than we deserve’: the Traditional Roots of the Amises’ Contemporary Satires.”  Critical Engagements

satire issue. Winter 2010. 

“‘Preferring the composite darkness’: Trauma Theory and Narration in The Ground Beneath Her Feet and

Shalimar the Clown.”Rushdie the Novelist: from Grimus to The Enchantress of Florence. Ed. Meenakshi

Bharat. Delhi, India: Pencraft International, 2008. 247-63.

“Trappists” and “Houdini” [two poems]. The Antigonish Review 153 (Summer 2008): 76-79.

“Retreating” [poem]. The Merton Journal 15.1 (Easter 2008): 23-24.

“Winterson’s Recent Work: Navigating Realism and Postmodernism.” Jeanette Winterson: A Contemporary Critical

Guide. Ed. Sonya Andermahr. London and New York: Continuum, 2007. 146-62.

“New York, Los Angeles, and Other Toxicities: Revisiting Postmodernism in Rushdie's Fury and Shalimar

the Clown.” The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism.  Eds. Neil Brooks and Josh Toth. 

Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. 143-68. Preview available from Google Books.

“Remembrance of Mentorship Past—or, Marlow at the Shuffleboard.” Aldous Huxley: Modern Satirical Novelist

of Ideas. Eds. Peter Firchow and Bernfried Nugel. “Human Potentialities,” vol. 8. LIT Verglag: Münster, Germany,

2006. XI-XVI.  Preview available from Google Books.

“W(h)ither Postmodernism: Late Amis.” Martin Amis: Postmodernism and Beyond. Ed. Gavin Keulks. Basingstoke

and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 158-79.

"Introduction." Martin Amis: Postmodernism and Beyond. Ed. Gavin Keulks. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2006. 1-8.

Nine articles (c. 2500-4500 words each) for the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. 5 vols. Eds. David Scott

Kastan et al. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

    • “Elizabeth Bowen.” Vol 1: 255-59.
    • “Arthur Conan Doyle.” Vol 2: 203-08.
    • “Graham Greene.” Vol. 2: 466-71.
    • “Aldous Huxley.” Vol. 3: 90-94.
    • “Kazuo Ishiguro.” Vol. 3: 111-14.
    • “David Lodge.” Vol. 3: 328-31.
    • “Edna O’Brien.” Vol. 4: 117-20.
    • “Salman Rushdie.” Vol. 4: 425-31.
    • “Jeanette Winterson.” Vol. 5: 299-302.

 

Kingsley Amis.” The Literary Encyclopedia. Ed. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott and Janet Todd.  6 January 2005.

London: The Literary Dictionary Company. http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5102

“The Shower” [poem]. The Merton Journal 10.2 (Advent 2003): 24-26.

Aldous Huxley: A Centenary Bibliography (1978-1995).” Journal of Modern Literature, XX.2 (Winter 1996): 223-38.

“Grounds for Debate: The Nature of R. S. Thomas’s Early Poetry and Prose.” Proceedings of the First Annual

Conference on Welsh Studies. Rio Grande, OH: NAASWCH, 1996. 95-102.  

Website Development and Administration

Professional Homepage: www.wou.edu/~keulksg/ 

The Martin Amis Web. Authoritative scholarly site. Top-ranked on all search engines. 2006-Present.

<http://www.martinamisweb.com>

Honors Program website, Western Oregon University. 2008-Present. <http://www.wou.edu/honors/>

Faculty Senate website, Western Oregon University. 2010-Present. <http://www.wou.edu/president/facultysenate/>

English Department website, Western Oregon University. 2007-2010. <http://www.wou.edu/las/humanities/english/>

 

Presentations: Professional Conferences

“Trauma Memorials and Historical Geography: Ghost Estates as Modern-day Famine Walls.”
Transatlantic Connections
II Conference. Donegal, Ireland, January 2015.

“'What Rough Beast': Integrated and Conflicted Spaces in Dublin.”
American/Canadian International Conference on Irish Studies. University College Dublin, Ireland, June 2014.

“Authorship in the Age of Online Archiving.”
Popular and American Culture National Conference. Washington, D.C., March 2013.

“Shadowy Margins and Sinkholes: Authorship, Online Archives, and IP Law..”

Popular and American Culture National Conference. Boston, MA, April 2012.

“The Rhetoric of Road-Rage: Authorial Websites and Literary Hit-and-Runs.”

Popular and American Culture National Conference. San Antonio, TX, April 2011.

“The Mythology of Martin Amis.” Midwest Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL, November 2010.

“Critical Mass: Violence, Passion, and the Irish Political Grotesque.”

Northeast Modern Language Association. Montreal, Quebec. April, 2010.

“Terrible Beauties, Beautiful Terrors: McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane.”

Midwest Modern Language Association. St. Louis, MO, November 2009.

“Martin McDonagh and the Political Grotesque.”

Popular and American Culture National Conference. New Orleans, LA, April 2008.

“The Bad Boys of Lad Lit: Tremors of Post-Feminism in the Novels of Kingsley and Martin Amis.”

Northeast Modern Language Association. Boston, MA, February 2008.

“Mad Padraig and the Celtic Tiger: Martin McDonagh and Postnationalist Ireland.”

Midwest Modern Language Association. Minneapolis, MN, November 2008.

“The Condition of England Novel and Contemporary Satire.”

Satire Today. U.K. Network for Modern Fiction Studies. New York, NY, June 2008.

“Intellectual Properties: Growth Boundaries in Digital Scholarship and Copyright Law.”

Southwest/Texas Popular and American Culture Associations Conference. Albuquerque, NM, February 2008.

“Confronting the Contemporary: Emergent Realism(s).”

Midwest Modern Language Association. Cleveland, OH, November 2007.

“Digital Humanizing.”

Society for Digital Humanities (SDH/SEMI) Annual Conference. Saskatoon, Canada, May 2007.

“Administering Author Websites: Evolving Challenges in Scholarship, Copyright, and Discussion.”

Popular and American Culture Joint Conference. Boston, MA, April 2007.

“‘Starving, Freezing, and Weeping Hysterically’: Cultural Navigation in Ripley Bogle.”

Midwest Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL, November 2006.

“Late Rushdie or Rushdie Lite?: Redemption and Recuperation in Fury and Shalimar the Clown.”

15th Annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference. Savannah, GA, February 2006.

“‘To avoid discovery I stay on the run”: Exilic and Amnesiac Selves in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction.”

Midwest Modern Language Association. Milwaukee, WI, November 2005. 

“Jamesy and the Giant Book: Joyce and the ‘Death of the Novel’ Debate.”

American Conference on Irish Studies. University of Notre Dame, April 2005.

 

“Yellow Dogs of Fury: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Postmodern Panic.” 

Communities in Crisis: Isolation, Desecration, Transformation in the 20th Century.

University of South Carolina, April 2005.

 

“Journeys on the Night Train: Postmodern Crises and Crossroads.”

Twentieth Century Literature and Culture Conference. University of Louisville.February 2005.

 

“Feminism and Its Discontents: Kingsley and Martin Amis’ Response to Modernist Masculinity.”

Midwest Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL, November 2003.

 

“After Postmodernism: Amis, Rushdie, and the Event Horizons of Fiction.” 

Twentieth Century Literature and Culture Conference. University of Louisville. February 2003.

 

“Handcuffed to History: Can Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Co-Exist?” 

Rethinking Commonwealth/Postcolonial Literatures Conference. Santa Clara University. April 2002

 

“Diving Into the Wreck: Joyce, Excess, and the Degraded Modern Epic.”

Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.  University of California, Berkeley. July 2001.

 

“Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the Twentieth-Century Realism Wars.” 

Twentieth Century Literature Conference. University of Louisville, February 1998.

 

“The Natural Echoes of R. S. Thomas’s Early Poetry.”

First Annual Conference on Welsh Studies. University of Rio Grande (Ohio). June 1995.  

 

“Water as Text and Self: Thoreau’s Water Bodies.”

Textual Regions and Regional Texts. University of Kentucky. November 1994.

 

“Symbolic Horseplay: Heroes, Horses, and Hubris in Two Classic Westerns.” 

Popular Culture Association of the South. University of North Carolina-Charlotte, October 1994. 

Presentations: Guest Lectures

 

“Robert’s Rules, Meeting Efficiencies, and Other Exciting, Soul-inspiring Things.” 
Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, October 2012

“The Public Face of Scholarship.” Pastega Award for Excellence in Scholarship.
Western Oregon University,
May 2007.

“Chinua Achebe and Post-colonialism: A Primer.” North Salem (OR) High School. May 2004.

“Salman Rushdie and the Politics of Art.” Peace and Social Justice Series. Western Oregon University, June 2001. 

Related Professional Activity

 

Essay Reviewer (annual), Twentieth-Century Literature. 1999-Present.

Essay Reviewer (occasional or solitary), Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Society; Irish Studies Review
Clio: A Journal of Literature and History; Modern Language Review.

Manuscript Reviewer (occasional or solitary), McGill University Press; Bloomsbury Academic Press.

Editorial Assistant, Critical Essays on Aldous Huxley. Ed. Jerome Meckier. New York: G.K. Hall, 1997. 

Editorial Assistant, Patrick Kavanagh: A Reference Guide. Ed. Jonathan Allison. New York: G.K. Hall, 1996.

Editorial Assistant, ANQ: American Notes and Queries. Department of English, University of Kentucky, 1994-96. 

Supervisor and Writing Portfolio Evaluator, Kentucky State Board of Education. Summers, 1993-94.

Writing Center Consultant, University of Kentucky, 1990-92

Teaching Experience

At Western Oregon University: Graduate and Upper-Division Coursework

 

ENG 631:                        Major Theories of Literary Criticism

ENG 624:                        British Literature: Modernism to Postmodernism

WR 610:                          Forms of Expository Prose

ENG 489/589:                 Minority Literature: Asian-American Literature

ENG 447/547:                 Major Authors: W.B. Yeats

ENG 447/547:                 Major Authors: James Joyce

ENG 421/521:                 Studies in British Literature

ENG 415/515:                 Topics in Theory: Postcolonialism

ENG 415/515:                 Topics in Theory: Socio-Historicism

ENG 415/515:                 Topics in Theory: Postmodernism

ENG 407/507:                 Seminar: Contemporary Irish Literature

ENG 407/507:                 Seminar: British Postmodern Fiction

ENG 407/507:                 Seminar: Irish Modernism

HUM 407H:                     Junior Honors Seminar:  The Literature of Terrorism

HUM 407H:                     Junior Honors Seminar: 20th-Century Irish Literature

ENG 399:                        Apocalypse Then: Literature and Culture of the 1990s

ENG 386:                        Form and Meaning in Film

ENG 386:                        Italian Neorealism and Beyond

ENG 325:                        Twentieth-Century British Literature

WR 414:                          Advanced Composition

WR 321w:                       Business and Technical Writing

H 353:                              Honors Thesis Development

H 303:                              Honors Thesis Orientation

 

              At Western Oregon University: Lower-Division Coursework

 

ENG 223w:                      Introduction to Literary Study

ENG 206:                        Survey of British Literature, 1832-Present

ENG 205:                        Survey of British Literature, 1660-1832

ENG 204:                        Survey of British Literature, Beowulf to 1660

ENG 106:                        Introduction to Literature: Poetry

ENG 105:                        Introduction to Literature: Drama

ENG 104:                        Introduction to Literature: Fiction

WR 135:                          College Writing II

 

              At University of Kentucky: Lower-Division Coursework

 

ENG 222:                        British Literature 1700-1985: Pope to Postmodernism.

ENG 221:                        British Literature 1300-1700: Sir Gawain to John Milton.           

ENG 252:                        American Literature 1865-1990: Dream and Disillusionment.

ENG 252:                        American Literature II (Team-taught with John G. Cawelti)

ENG 251:                        American Literature 1607-1865: Colonialism to Civil War. 

ENG 251:                        American Literature I (Team-taught with Steven Weisenburger)

ENG 201:                        Business and Technical Writing

ENG 102:                        Intermediate Composition

ENG 101:                        Introductory Composition

 

Student Mentorship

Graduate Thesis Advisor and/or Committee Member

  • Tim Freitag, M.S. in Education (WOU), 2010.
  • Kym Logan, Ph.D. in English (Monash University, Australia), 2009.
  • Rebecca Penna, M.S. in Education (WOU), 2007.
  • Nicole LaRose. Ph.D. in English (University of Florida), 2006. 
  • Jessica Mills, M.S. in Education (WOU), 2006.
  • Julie Peterson. M.S. in Education (WOU), 2005.

Western Oregon University Undergraduate Thesis Advisor

    • Katy Bradley Connor, "Through Their Eyes: Style and Character in Roddy Doyle," Honors Program, 2007.
    • Jesse Light, "100 Percent American: A Hard Proven Fact," History Department, 2003.
    • Roseanne Pascalette Caputi, “Suicide Race” [drama], Honors Program, 2002.
    • Celeste D. Barker, “Father, Word and Holy Breath: The Genesis and Revelations of Stephen Dedalus,”
      Honors Program, 2001.
 

Honors, Grants, and Awards

    • Recipient, Faculty Academic Advisor of the Year award, Western Oregon University, 2014.
    • Faculty Development Major Project Grant, Western Oregon University, 2013. $2800 for archival research,
      Dublin, Ireland.
    • Fellow, International Canadian Studies Institute. 14-26 July 2009. Alberta Province Locations: Calgary,
      Banff Centre, Athabasca Glacier, Ice Fields Parkway, Edmonton, Fort McMurray Oil Sands, DrumHeller,
      Lethbridge.
    • Recipient, Mario and Alma Pastega Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship, Western Oregon University,
      2007. $1000.
    • Faculty Development Major Project Grant, Western Oregon University, 2006. $3000 for archival research,
      London, England.
    • Finalist, Mario and Alma Pastega Award for Faculty Scholarship. Western Oregon University, 2006.
    • Finalist, Mario and Alma Pastega Award for Excellence in Teaching, Western Oregon University,
      2002,
      2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.
    • Faculty Development Major Project Grant, Western Oregon University, 2003. $2500 for archival research,
      the Thomas Merton Center,
      Bellarmine University, and Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, Kentucky.
    • Faculty Development Major Project Grant, Western Oregon University, 2002.  $1500 for archival research,
      Huntington Library, California.
    • Faculty Development Summer Stipend, Western Oregon University, 2001. $1000.
    • Outstanding Teacher of Literature, University of Kentucky, English Department, 1999.
    • Dissertation Year Fellowship, University of Kentucky, 1997-98. $11,000.

Education and Degrees

Ph.D., English, University of Kentucky, May 1999.

       

Dissertation: Father and Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950.  

Examination Areas: 20th Century British Literature; American Literature Since 1865; Victorian Literature;

Literary Theory. Committee:  Profs. Jerome Meckier, chair; John G. Cawelti, Steven Weisenburger, Jonathan
Allison, and William Campbell.

 

M.A., English, University of Kentucky, May 1992.

 

Thesis: Aesthetics in Theory and Practice: The Critical Theories of Ford Madox Ford.

 

B.A., English (Honors), University of Wisconsin, Madison, May 1989.