CURRENT POSITION:
Associate Professor of English, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.EDUCATION:
Ph.D. Comparative Literature. August 1987, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Major: Comparative Literature (20th century)
Minors: Art History and ItalianM.A. Comparative Literature. May 1984, Indiana University. Thesis Topic: "The Influence of Stéphane Mallarmé on James Joyce: A Reassessment."
M.A. English. May 1977, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.
B.A. English and French. June 1975, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.
"'floating particles of paper': E. E. Cummings' Collage Poems," Cahiers Charles V 34 (September 2003): 51-73. [Collage / Montage / Assemblage: Poésie Anglaise et Américaine. Ed. Paul Volsik]FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS:
"Poemgroups in No Thanks," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 11 (2002): 10-40.
"'le chant est le silence': Être et Néant dans la Poésie Visuelle de E. E. Cummings." Trans. Thierry Gillyboeuf. Plein Chant 74-74 (Winter-Spring 2002): 151-167. [Translation of "singing is silence"]"E. E. Cummings: The New Nature Poetry and the Old," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 9 (2000): 109-124.
"Magic Iconism: Defamiliarization, Sympathetic Magic, and Visual Poetry (Apollinaire and Cummings)" European Journal of English Studies, 5 (2001): 97-113.
Review of Martin Heusser's I Am My Writing and Norman Friedman's (Re) Valuing Cummings in Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 8 (1999): 171-78.
"'singing is silence': Being and Nothing in the Visual Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature. Ed. Olga Fischer and Max Nänny. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 1999. 199-214.
"'hatred bounces': Satire and Prejudice in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 7 (1998): 23-38.
"E. E. Cummings and the Reader: Technique as Critique," Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. 223-232.
Reading Visual Poetry after Futurism: Marinetti, Apollinaire, Schwitters, Cummings. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
"Cummings, Kennedy, and the Major/Minor Issue," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 4 (1995): 76-82.
"Searching for Browning's Traces in 'The Dead,'" James Joyce Quarterly 31.4 (1994): 552-557.
"A Note on the Two Comps," Grand Valley Review 5.2 (1990): 17-20.
"What Was Comp. Lit. and Where Did It Go?" Grand Valley Review 5.1 (1989): 27-6.
"Words-in-Freedom and the Oral Tradition," Visible Language 23 (1989): 65-87.
"Cummings' Sinister Dexterity: Exercises in Meaning and Unmeaning," Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society 12 (2003).
"The Enormous Room: A Dada of One's Own." American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 27-30, 2004.PRESENTATIONS TO FACULTY AND STUDENTS:
"Cummings' Sinister Dexterity: Exercises in Meaning and Unmeaning," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, May 22-25, 2003.
"'floating particles of paper': E. E. Cummings' Collage Poems," presented at the conference "Collage, Montage, and Assemblage in English Language Poetry," Université de Paris VII—Denis Diderot and the the Insitut d'Anglais Charles V, Paris, France, June 13-15, 2002."Poemgroups in No Thanks," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, May 24-27, 2001.
"Sentimental Avant-Gardism? The Case of Kurt Schwitters," Rethinking the Avant-Garde: Between Politics and Aesthetics, University of Notre Dame, April 14-15, 2000.
"The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Popular Culture in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Seminar paper presented at the inaugural conference of the Modernist Studies Association, Penn State University, State College, PA, October 7-10, 1999.
"E. E. Cummings: The New Nature Poetry and the Old," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 27-30, 1999.
"Magic Iconism: Defamiliarization, Sympathetic Magic, and Visual Poetry (Apollinaire and Cummings)," Second Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature, University of Amsterdam, March 25-27, 1999.
"'hatred bounces': Satire and Prejudice in the Poetry of E. E. Cummings," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 22-25, 1997.
"'singing is silence': Being and Nothing in the Visual Poetry of E. E. Cummings," Symposium: Iconicity in Language and Literature, University of Zürich, March 20-22, 1997.
"E. E. Cummings: Science as Threat and Authority," American Literature Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 26-28, 1995.
"E. E. Cummings and the Reader: Technique as Critique," Interart Studies: New Perspectives, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, May 15-19, 1995.
"Cummings, Kennedy, and the Major/Minor Issue," American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, June 2-5, 1994.
"Kurt Schwitters Assembles Abstract Poetry," International Association for Word and Image Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, August 15-21, 1993.
"Six Troublesome Terms in Avant-Garde Poetics," American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Bloomington, IN, March 25-28, 1993.
"Apollinaire and the Emblematic Tradition," American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Columbia University, April 3-5, 1992.
"Passion, Play, and Performance in Pirandello's 'Questa sera si recita a soggetto,'" Midwest MLA, St. Louis, November 1985.
"How to Read a Cummings Poem," English Department Colloquium, Grand Valley State University, March 17, 2003."What Is Visual Poetry?" Arts & Humanities Word & Image Conference, Grand Valley State University, September 14, 1999.
"Hesiod’s Theogony Viewed on a Male / Female Axis" for the Grand Valley Classical Forum, September 21, 1997.
"Word Emblems: Apollinaire’s Calligrams and Western Visual Poetry," Grand Valley State Faculty Colloquium, March 27, 1992.
"What Was Comparative Literature and Where Did It Go?," Grand Valley State Faculty Colloquium, November 1988.
Web master for Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society. Access the site at: http://www.gvsu.edu/english/Cummings/Index.htm.Production editor for the print version of Spring, 1999-
Editor, Good Writing Board, GVSU, 1989-98.
Editor for Encompass, alumni newsletter of the Comparative Literature Program at Indiana University, 1987-88.
Visual Poetry
Interarts comparison
Understanding resistance to the cultural and aesthetic "other"
The artist's role in society
Modern English, French, Italian, and German poetry
Mythology and oral narrative
Translating and translation theory
At Grand Valley State University, August 1988 - April 2003:
Nature WritingCourses taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, August 1981 - May 1986:
Literary Modernism
Studies in Poetry: Modern Poems
Studies in World Literature: African and Arabic Literature
The Moderns
Studies in Fiction: Encountering the Other
Topics in Literature: The Artist and Society
Introduction to Liberal Studies
Classical Literature
The Classical World
Mythology
Modern World Masterpieces
British Writers II
American Writers II
Business and Preprofessional Writing
English Composition: From Narration to Exposition
English Composition: Exposition and Argument
Modern Literature and the Other Arts:
(Introduction to literature, painting, and music and interarts comparison.)
Major Themes in World Literature
Professional Writing Skills
Elementary Composition
Introduction to Writing and the Study of Literature
Claus Clüver, Director. "The Semiotics of Aurally and Visually Elastic Poetries: 1910-1940."
Modernist poets stretched the boundaries of poetry by creating sound poems, calligrams, and typographic and typewritten visual forms. New semiotic relations created by this widening of genre are studied in the texts of five poets: F. T. Marinetti, Guillaume Apollinaire, Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, and E. E. Cummings. Differences and similarities among these texts are then compared with the Concrete Poetry of the 1950's. All these experiments are seen as a reaction to aestheticism, as attempts to bring art closer to the praxis of life. Peter Bürger's theory of the avant-garde provides a tool for comparing the context, effectiveness, and degree of those attempts.LANGUAGES:
French and Italian (Fluent)
German (Reading Knowledge)
English Department Student Activities Committee, 2003-PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:
English Department MA Committee, 2003-
Chair, English Department Personnel Committee, 1999-2001.
Chair pro-tem, Arts and Humanities Curriculum Committee, 1997-1998.
Member of English Department Task Force to consider options for departmental reorganization, summer 1998. (Wrote "Umbrella Model" proposal.)
English Department Faculty Review Committee, 1996-1997.
English Department Curriculum Committee, 1993-1996.
University Academic Senate, 1991-1992.
English Department Composition Committee, 1991-1992.
Art Editor, Amaranthus, student literary magazine, GVSU, 1991-1995.
English Department Media and Video Librarian, 1991-1998.
Oldenburg Writing Contest, 1991-1994.
Translators' Group, GVSU, 1992.
English Department Personnel Committee, 1990-1991.
Recycling Committee, 1989-1990.
American Comparative Literature AssociationDISTINCTIONS:
International Association of Word and Image Studies
E. E. Cummings Society
Modernist Studies Association
Co-winner of the Gilbert M. Tutungi Award for the best Master's thesis submitted in 1984, Indiana University Comparative Literature Program.Awarded Graduate Scholarship for the academic year 1975-76, Boston University English Department.
Mike Webster's home page
Recent Publications