Marilyn Atlas

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

Publications

Articles, Chapters, and Introductions

• “Toni Morrison and Her Literary Influences,” Editor Piper Kendrix Williams,  Approaches to Teaching Toni Morrison, Modern Language Association Press, 2026. In Press.
• “Avoiding Absolutes and Finding the Midwestern Middle Ground:  Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as Midwestern Literature and as Backdrop to Exploring Gray Areas. Critical Insights: The Bluest Eye, Editor Jericho Williams, Salem Press: Grey House Publishing, 2025, pp. 81-101.
• “Floyd Dell’s Optimism, Feminism, and Radical Rejection of Sexual Thralldom in His Two 1925 novels This Mad Ideal and Runaway.” Special Issue of Midwestern Miscellany: 1925, Guest Edited by Scott Emmert, 53.2 Fall 2025, pp. 33-55.
• “Avoiding the ‘Weathering’ of Black Girls by Not Banning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Special Issue of Midwestern Miscellany: Banned in the Heartland, Editor, John Rohrkemper, LLII, Spring-Fall, 2024, pp. 51-69.
• “Additional ‘Attention Must Be Paid’: Linda Loman’s Nylon Stockings and the Politics of Womanhood in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman,” MidAmerica L, 2024, pp.121-136.
• “Peeping through the Loopholes of Shame and Silence While Teaching Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861.” Editor Lynn Domina, Approaches to Teaching Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, MLA, 2024, pp.19-29.
• "Lazarus Rising in Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage: Mirrors, Doubles, and Becoming a Hero in 'Boar Taint,’” MidAmerica XLIX, 2022, pp.64-81.
• “Zona Gale’s Friendship Village, Modernism, and the ‘Revolt” In--Not From—the Village” Midwestern Miscellany, Special double issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of “Carl Van Doren’s “The Revolt from the Village: 1920,” edited by Marcia Noe, Spring/ Fall 2021, pp. 47-63.           
• “Patricia Hampl, Minnesota and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History.” Ed. Ronald Primeau. Critical Insights: Midwestern Literature. Ipswich, Mass: Salem Press, 2014. 61-75.
• “Patricia Hampl, Minnesota and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History.” Ed. Ronald Primeau. Critical Insights: Midwestern Literature. Ipswich, Mass: Salem Press, 2014.
• “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

• 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.
• Guest Editor, Special Issue on Midwestern Women Writers, Midwestern Miscellany X (1982).

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

• “Resemblances and Feminist Agency in Sanora Babb’s 1939 Dustbowl Novel, whose names are unknown, Part of Panel Entitled “Family Resemblances: Hybridity and Genre in Midwestern, Working Class, Middle Class, and/ or Radical Literature. Chosen to be Part of Presidential Theme, “Family Resemblances,” Modern Language Association Conference, Toronto, Canada, January 2026, forthcoming. 
• “Floyd Dell’s Radical, Optimistic, and Diverse Rejection of Sexual Thralldom in his Two 1925 Novels, This Mad Ideal and Runaway.” Special Session on the Year 1925 in Midwestern Literature, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2025.
• “Finding ‘An Ornament of Comfort, a Grave and Tremulous Spring of Joy’: Oklahoma Migrants and Hope in Sanora Babb’s 1939 novel, whose names are unknown, Part of a Panel on Hope and Hybridity in Working-Class Midwestern Literature, Midwest Modern Language Association Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 2025.
• “Making the Invisible Visible: from Nella Larsen’s Quicksand to Gwendolyn Brooks’ Emmet Till Poems,” Selected to be a Part of Presidential Theme, Visibility and Power, Modern Language Association Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana January 2025.
• “‘Weathering’ and Tillie Olsen’s “Tell Me a Riddle” as Midwestern Cautionary Tale,” Midwest Modern Language Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, November 2024.
• “The Metaphorical Rise of the House of Atreus or Kicking the Chorus Out of the House: Geography Lessons in Lorraine Hansberry’s Obliquely Midwestern Play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing Michigan, May 2024.
• “Social Change and Personal Happiness in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” Modern Language Association Conference, January 2024.
• “What Susan Glaspell Gave Democracy in 1921: Grooming in ‘Love of the Hills,’ and The Verge, Midwest Modern Language Association Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 2023.
• Building Up and Bringing Down the House: Samson d’Arnault and Working Conditions In My Antonia, Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, California, January 2023.
• “‘I’d Rather Be the Steam Rising from Manure Than Be a Thing Called Beautiful’: Loneliness, Female Creativity, And Implosion in Susan Glaspell’s 1922 Experimental Drama, The Verge” part of “Davenport-area Authors Shine in  Davenport, Chicago, and Beyond, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) East Lansing, Michigan, May 2023.
• “Anna Julia Cooper’s, A Voice from the South: Intersectionality and Silences, part of “Honoring the Legacy of Early Black Women Writers: A Roundtable” Sponsored By Alden Library’s Special Collections Curator, Miriam Intrator, Alden Library, March 21, 2023.
• “Building Up and Bringing Down the House:  Samson d’Arnault and Working Conditions in My Antonia,” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, California, January 2023.
• “Additional ‘Attention Must be Paid’: Linda Loman’s Nylon Stockings and the Politics of Womanhood in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing Michigan, May 2022.
• “Bette Howland’s Blue in Chicago and the Defamiliarized Image, Modern Language Association Conference, Washington D.C. January 2022.
• “Bette Howland, Blue in Chicago, Public Spaces, and the American Dream,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Virtual, November  2022.
• “A Hard Look at My Antonia—Not So Fast and Not So Sentimental” Invited Three part talk at Athens Public Library (via Google Meet), facilitator Todd Bastin, June 9,16, 23, 2022.
• “A Look at bringing Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 to Ohio University and Tantrum Stages” with Brent Frederick, Asst. Professor of Instruction, Musical Theater & Music Director and Alan Patrick Kenny Assistant Professor and Head of Musical Theater, Ohio University Tantrum Theater, April 1, 2022.
• Talk-Back, “Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of1812,” talk back after Tantrum Performance, Ohio University, March 31, 2022.
• “Community and the Unkillability of Eugene Henderson in Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel, Henderson the Rain King. Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, November 2021.
• “Lazarus Rising.’” Becoming a Hero, Mirrors, Doubles, and Irony, in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Final American Salvage Short Story, ‘Boar Taint.’” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, Chicago, Illinois, 2021. Postponed due to Covid-19. 
• “‘The Perpetual Forgiveness of Sin’ and Saul Bellow’s ‘Unkillable’ Eugene Henderson, Modern Language Association, Toronto, Canada. 2021. Selected to be part of Judith Butler’s Presidential Theme, Persistence! Due to Covid-19 the conference will be virtual.
• “‘Bad Luck in Small Doses Can Cast a Glittering Light on the Rest of Our Lives’: What Ann Patchett Has to Teach Us About Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’” facilitator Caitlin Bond, December 9, 2021.
• “Community and the Unkillability of Eugene Henderson in Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel, Henderson the Rain King. Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, November 2021.
• “Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha, the Mid-Century American Novel, and Being Human,” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, January 10, 2020. Selected as Part of Simon Gikandi’s Presidential Theme, Being Human. 
• “Mirrors, Paula McClain’s Novel Circling the Sun, and Beryl Markham’s Memoir West with the Night,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 2019.
• “What Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha and Free Will Have to Teach Us in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2019.
• “Impossible Enjambment, Fits, Starts, and Place in Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, January 3, 2019. Selected as part of Anne Ruggles Gere’s Presidential Theme,Textual Transactions. 
• “‘Attention Must Be Paid’: Linda Loman, Language, and the Politics of Womanhood in Death of a Salesman,” The 13th International Arthur Miller Conference, October 19, 2019, The Arthur Miller Society, Ashland, Ohio.
• “Inherited Trauma and the Holocaust in Anthony Doerr’s All the Light we Cannot See (2014),” Midwest Modern Language Association, Kansas City, Missouri, November 2018.
• “Geography Lessons and Midwestern Space in Nathan Hill’s The Nix.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2018.
• “Imagining Walter Cronkite Imagining Himself as a Bird Flying Above the Chicago Riots: The Complex Midwest in Nathan Hill’s Absurdist Novel, The Nix.” Modern Language Association. New York, January 2018. Selected as Part of Diane Taylor’s Presidential Theme, “States of Insecurity.”
• “Nathan Hill’s The Nix and the Art of Midwestern Resistance,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 2017.
• “Appeal to Reason, Multiple Endings, and Geography Lessons in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle,” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017. Selected as part of Anthony Appiah’s Presidential Theme, Boundary Conditions.
• “Bringing One’s Own Eraser and Making Something New Out of An Absurd World: Identity and Experimental Form in Bob Dylan’s First and Only Novel, Tarantula.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, June 2017.
• “Genre Crossing: Echoes of William Carlos Williams’ Long Poem, Paterson in Jonathan Franzen’s Novel, The Twenty-Seventh City,” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2016.
• "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