Marilyn Atlas

Atlas also teaches in Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and the Jewish Studies Certificate.

Education

Ph.D. March 1979, Michigan State University

A.M. December 1973, University of Illinois (Urbana, Champaign)

A.B. High Honors in Liberal Arts and Sciences with Distinction in English Education, June 1973, University of Illinois

B.S. High Honors in Liberal arts and Sciences with Distinction in Psychology, August 1972, University of Illinois

Scholarly Focus

• American Literature

Publications

Articles

“Patricia Hampl, Minnestora and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History.” Ed. Ronald Primeau. Critical Insights: Midwestern Literature. Ipswich, Mass: Salem Press, 2014. 61-75.

“Patricia Hampl, Minnestora and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History.” Ed. Ronald Primeau. Critical Insights: Midwestern Literature. Ipswich, Mass: Salem Press, 2014. Forthcoming.

“Real, Romantic, Modern and Natural: Midwestern Hybridity and Franklin Booth’s Illustrations in Theodore Dreiser’s A Hoosier Holiday.” Ed. Ronald Primeau. Critical Insights: American Road Literature. Ipswich, Mass: Salem Press, 2013. 32-46.

“Exiles All: Becoming the Individual in the Lighthouse Looking out, and Margaret Anderson’s My Thirty Years’ War.” Inter/Sections: Isagani R. Cruz and Friends (Festschrift in Honor of Isagani R. Cruz), Ed. David Jonathon Y. Bayot. Manila, Philippines. De La Salle University/Anvil Publishing, 2010. 159-174, (published in hardbound and paperback).

“One Bostonian’s Romantic, Realistic, and Modern View of the Midwest: Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843.” Ed. Jane Waterman. Midwestern Miscellany Special Issue “The Midwest as Seen by Non - Midwestern Writers.” XXXVIII Spring/Fall 2010: 24-36.

“From Novel to Plays: Zona Gale and the Marriage Plot in Three Versions of Miss Lulu Bett,” Midwestern Miscellany XXX 2002: 35-45. Reprinted in Drama Criticism.
New York: Gale, 2008.

“From Novel to Plays: Zona Gale and the Marriage Plot in Three Versions of Miss Lulu Bett,” Midwestern Miscellany XXX 2002: 35-45 (appeared December 2003).

“Foreword,” In the Days of Serfdom and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy, 1911. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. vii-ix.

“Sherwood Anderson and the Women of Winesburg.” In Critical Essays on Sherwood Anderson, edited by David D. Anderson. New York: G.K. Hall and Company. 1981, 250-265. Reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Volume 123. New York: Gale, 2002. 9-17.

“The Issue of Literacy in America: Slave Narratives and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye,” MidAmerica XXVII 2000. 106-119 (appeared in 2002).

“Ellen Van Volkenburg, Women Building Chicago: A Biographical Dictionary 1790-1990. Ed. Rima Lunin Schulz and Adele Hast. Bloomington, Indiana: University Press, 2001, 909-911.

“Margaret Anderson,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 37-40.

“Alice Gerstenberg,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 218-220.

“Harriet Monroe,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 364-366.

“Toni Morrison,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 370-375.

“Eunice Tietjens,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 495-497.

“Between the Mission and the Factory: Eunice Tietjens’ Profiles from China,” Midwestern Miscellany 27 (Fall, 1999): 17-26.

“Ellen Van Volkenburg,’ Women Building Chicago: A Biographical Dictionary 1790-1990. Ed. Rima Lunin Schulz and Adele Hast. Bloomington, Indiana: University Press, 2001, 909-911.

“Margaret Anderson,’ Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 37-40.

‘Alice Gerstenberg,’ Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 218-220.

“Harriet Monroe,’ Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 364-366.

“Toni Morrison,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 370-375.

“Eunice Tietjens,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 495-497.

“Between the Mission and the Factory: Eunice Tietjens’ Profiles from China,” Midwestern Miscellany 27 (Fall, 1999): 17-26.

“Cracked Psyches and Verbal Putty: Geography and Integrity in Toni Morrison’s Jazz,” Midwestern Miscellany 24 (1996): 63-76.

“Tone and Technology in Harriet Monroe’s ‘The Turbine,’” MidAmerica 22 (l995): 69-82.

“Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Critics,” Midwestern Miscellany 18 (1990): 45-57. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale Library Criticism Series, Christopher Giroux, editor, 87 (1995): 291-295.

“A Review Essay of Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds, by Lois Palken Rudnick,” Resources for American Literary Studies 14 (1986): 209-212.

Five critical abstracts: Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters; Marge Piercy, Dance the Eagle to Sleep and Vida; Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Falling and Time in its Flight. Adolescent Female Portraits in the American Novel, 1961-1981. Eds. Jane S. Bakerman and Mary Jean DeMarr. New York: Garland Press, l986: 21; 136; 136-7; 165-166; 166.

“Innovation in Chicago: Alice Gerstenberg’s Psychological Drama.” Midwestern Miscellany 10 (1982): 59-68.

“Creating Women’s Myth: Emily Dickinson’s Legacy to Susan Glaspell, Alison’s House.” Focus 8.1 (1981): 55-61. Reprinted by the National Council of Teachers of English, l982.

“The Figurine in the China Cabinet: Saul Bellow and the Nobel Prize.” MidAmerica 8 (1981): 36-49.

“Harriet Monroe, Margaret Anderson, and the Spirit of the Chicago Renaissance.” Midwestern Miscellany 9 (1981): 43-53.

“Sherwood Anderson and the Women of Winesburg.” Critical Studies on Sherwood Anderson. ed., David D. Anderson. Boston: G.K. Hall, l981: 250-266.

“From Middle Border to City: Chicago’s Literary Origins, A Review Essay of Prairie Voices by Kenny Williams.” The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 10.3 (1980): 29-32.

“Exploring Line and Circle Imagery: An Entrance into Moby-Dick.” Focus 7.2 (1981): 12-18. Reprinted by the National Council of Teachers of English, l982.

“Elmer Gantry, the Novel and the Film.” Writing About Film and Fiction. Ed. Herbert Bergman. East Lansing: Film Research Center Publications, l980: 240-6.

“The Darker Side of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.” The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 10.2 (1980): 1-13.

“Clear Water From a Porcelain Spigot: A Review Essay of Alive With You This Day by F. Richard Thomas.” The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 10.1 (1980): 44-49.

“Experimentation in the Chicago Little Theatre: Cloyd Head’s Grotesques.” Midwestern Miscellany 8 (1980) 7-19.

“Voltairine de Cleyre’s Feminism: A Study of Her Theory and Characterization.” MidAmerica 7 (1980): 40-51.

“A Woman Both Shiny and Brown: Feminine Strength in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.” The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 9.3 (1979): 8-12.

Poetry

“More Than Molasses.” Readings from the Midwest Poetry Festival 2 (1984): 3.

“Every Refuge Has its Price--I Pay in Silence (A Parable)” and “Faith.” In Other Than Scholarly Ways. East Lansing: Years Press, l980: 6-8.

“We Crawl Toward God.” University College Quarterly. 25.4 (1980): 32.

“Youth Knows A World” and “Through Summer.” University College Quarterly 25.2 (1980): 18-19.

“Night Clicks On.” Red Cedar Review. 7.2 (1978): 25.

“Tortuous Journey to Poetry.” Speakout. Poetry Issue (1977): 1

“To David My Own Personal Spring.” Seed and Stamen 1 (1977): 27.

Dissertation

A Psychobiographical Approach to Moby-Dick. Director: C. David Mead. This dissertation attempts to trace and illuminate the circle and line imagery of the novel by examining their relationship to the novel’s characterization as well as to the author’s personality, friendships, and family construction.

Editorships

Editor, Conversations with Cynthia Ozick, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press (under contract for 2016).

Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature II, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2016.

Guest Editor, Special Issue on “Writing Chicago," Midwestern Miscellany XLIII Spring/Fall (2015).

Editorial Board Committee for MidAmerica and Midwestern Miscellany, 2004- present.

Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature I, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Guest Editor, Special Issue on Toni Morrison, Midwestern Miscellany 24 (1996).

Associate Editor, The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter, East Lansing, Michigan, 1978-1988.

Selected Awards and Honors

Editorial Board, Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature I, 1992--present

Fulbright, Manila, Philippines, May-August 1985

The MidAmerica Award for “distinguished contributions to the study of Midwestern literature,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 14, 2004

Member of the Ohio University-De La Salle University Affiliation Program, Ohio University, Fulbright, Manila, Philippines, May-August 1985

USIS Lecturer

Feminist Award

Award for Excellence in Teaching

Selected Grants

Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Humanities Research Grant ("Dictionary of Midwestern Literature editing and indexing") 2015-16.

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (Ohio University), Publication Support, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature II 2016.

Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Professional Development Award (“’Alone Together’”: A Closer Look at Intimacy, Authority and Relationships Between Humans and Technology”), Costa Rica IPCA, Summer 2011.

Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Professional Development Award ( “Geography and Identity: The Ireland of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce”), Summer 2003.

Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Professional Development Award (“Modernism in Paris”), 2001.

Selected Regional, National and International Lectures

"The Craters of Our Childhood Are Etched on Our Faces: Geography Lessons in Toni Morrison's Eleventh Novel, G-d Help the Child," Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, May 2016.

"Glancing Geographically at the Reception of Toni Morrison's Latest Novel, G-d Help the Child: Does the Midwest Still Matter?" Modern Language Association, Austin, Texas January 2016. Part of the presidential theme, "Literature's Public Receptions."

"Toni Morrison's G-d Help the Child: Rememory as Science and Aesthetic,"Midwest Modern Language Association, Columbus, Ohio November 2015.

"The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography (1994), The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature (2001), and the Not So Simple Sometimes Progressive Art of the Jewish, Post-Post-Modern Poet, Philip Levine, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, May 2015.

"Resisting Realism: The Role of Memory and Place in Saul Bellow's Winter Novella, The Actual, " Vancouver, Canada, January 2015. Part of the Margaret W. Fergusen presidential theme, "Negotiating Sites of Memory."

"Chicago and Race in Cyrus Colter's Short Story, 'Black for Dinner' (1965)," Midwest Modern Language Association, Detroit Michigan November 2014.

“‘She Said She Wouldn’t Go Back to Chicago if She Was Dragged by a Train’: Traffic Circles and the ‘Sagamore Flyover’ as Metaphors in Peter Orner’s Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, May 2014.

“Resisting Chicago in Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love,’” Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, January 2014. Part of the Marianne Hirsch’s presidential theme, “Vulnerable Times.”

“Split at the Root: Self-Consciousness, Art, and Artifice in Peter Orner’s Esther Stories, Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 2013.

“Flipping Around in Chicago’s Jewish Memory: Talk and Home and Talk in Peter Orner’s Experimental Novel, Love and Shame and Love,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2013.

“Ohio and the International Toni Morrison: From The Bluest Eye to Home,” Modern Language Association, Boston, Massachusetts, January 2013.

“Stamp Paid, Debt, and Redemption in Toni Morrison’s Latest Novel, Home,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 2012.

“Real Romantic, Modern and Natural: Theodore Dreiser’s A Hoosier Holiday and the Midwest,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2012.

“David D. Anderson, Remembered,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2012.

Dawn Powell’s Dance Night and “Midwest Small Town Poison” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, January 2012.

“Ha, ha, ha, Ouch: Dance Night, Trip Night, Black, Black, Dawn Powell, or ‘A Capacity to go Overboard is a requisite for a Full-Grown-Mind,’” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2011.

“Not Obsolete Yet, But Living on the Edge: Humans in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot,”International Popular Culture, American Culture Conference, San Jose, Cost Rica, July 2011.

“’One Man’s Ceiling is Anothr Man’s Floor’: Tracy Letts’s Superior Donuts’ Shortened Visit to Broadway,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2011.

“Patricia Hampl, Minnesota and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History, (Part of the panel, Narrating Lives & Midwestern Literary Self- Consciousness, presidential Theme, Modern Language Association, Los Angeles, California, January 2011.

“Terror, the Midwest, and the Lure of the Grotesque in Tracy Letts’s August, Osage County, Midwest/Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 2010.

“Staging the Midwest: Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County and Geography, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2010.

“Radical Styles and Thought in Esther Broner’s A Weave of Women (invited lecture) Jewish Studies and Women’s Studies Departments at Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, April 2010.

“’I’m Fine. Just got the Plains’: Geography and Sex in Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 2009.

“A Novel Worth Remembering and a Place Impossible to Forget: Dawn Powell’s Dance Night, Lampton, Ohio, Midwest Fantasy, and Midwest Migration,” Midwest/Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2009.

“Place and Space in Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2009.

“A Mercy or Mercy!” Toni Morrison’s Recent Fable or Failure,” Panel discussion with Dr. Melody Zajdel, Montana State University, International Popular Culture Convention, Turku, Finland, June 2009.

“Margaret Anderson’s The Unknowable Gurdjieff: The Journey West and the Journey Inward,” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, California, December 2008.

“Middle Class, in the Middle of America, in the Middle of the Century: Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter, Midwest/Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2008.

“The Midwest as Place and Symbol: Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843,” Society for the Study of Midwestern literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2008.

“Introducing Etgar Keret,” Wexner Center for the Arts, May 2008.

“Etgar Keret, Woody Allen and Lessons in Intertextuality or What’s Four Decades and Different Countries Among Friends?” Beth Tikvah Lecture Series, Columbus, Ohio, February 2007.

“Flipping Out With Etgar Keret: Israeli Funny Guy,”Beth Tikvah Lecture Series, Columbus, Ohio, February 2007.

“The Lake Front and the City: Margaret Anderson’s My Thirty Years’ War and Chicago,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, December 2007.

“Toni Morrison’s Eulogy for James Baldwin: Realism, Ambivalence, Fertility and Writing the Stories One Needs to Read,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, Ohio, November 2007.

“Ethnicity, Geography, and Humor in Adam Langer’s Crossing California and the Washington Story,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2007.

Selected Professional Experience

2016—present: Professor of English (tenured) at Ohio University

1984--2016: Associate Professor of English (tenured) at Ohio University

1985: Visiting Professor at De La Salle University in Manila Philippines

1980--1984: Director of Women’s Studies at Ohio University (1980-2) and Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University

Selected Professional Service

Prize Coordinator for the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature: Poetry, Creative Writing, and Criticism, 2003 to the present

“Margaret Fuller: Pioneer, Transcendentalist, and Scholar,” Television Conversation with Lois Whaley. Women Today & Yesterday, Public Television, Time-Warner Cable Channel 23. Athens, Ohio Community Access, Week of July 23, 2010

Served as Outside Evaluator for Tenure and Promotion at Other Institutions.

“Wired for Books,” International radio broadcasts on Leo Tolstoy, Raymond Carver, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston. Heard by thousands of people. Some programs translated into other languages. WOUB: Ohio University: David Kurz moderator and producer. Distribution 1996 to the present

Director of “Making Our Lives A Study: A Conference on Feminist Criticism and Creativity” (over 400 in attendance), Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, March l982

Courses Taught

Areas of Special Interest in Literature

• Early American
• American Renaissance
• American Modernism
• Twentieth Century Literature
• Midwestern Literature
• Women's Literature
• Jewish Literature
• Israeli Literature
• Literary History
• Literary Theory
• Canon Formation

Selected Classes Taught at Ohio University

(An asterisk identifies that Atlas was the individual who designed the class for inclusion in Ohio University's English Department's curriculum and was the first to teach it at Ohio University under its own number.)

• ENG 570N/ 774A: American Modernisms
• ENG 570P/775B: American Literature from the Civil War to 1914
• ENG 460: The Midwest in Fiction
• ENG 460: Melville, The American Renaissance, and Popular Culture
• ENG 460: The Chicago Literary Renaissance
• ENG 465: Toni Morrison's Fiction and the Study of Place
• ENG 465: Modernisms—Virginia Woolf and James Joyce
• ENG 306J: Women and Writing (memoir)
• ENG 321, 322, 323: American literature - - Beginnings to 1865; 1865 to 1914; and 1914 to the present
• ENG 327: African American Fiction (James Baldwin and Toni Morrison)
• ENG 325: Women's Literature *
• ENG 324a: Jewish American Literature *
• ENG 334: Israeli Literature *
• ENG 399T/478T: Twentieth Century American and British Tutorial