English Department Faculty
Faith Barrett
Associate professor of English
Education
Swarthmore College, B.A.
University of Iowa, M.F.A.
University of California, Berkeley, M.A., Ph.D.
Interests
Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
Literature and the Civil War
Race in American Literature
Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Courses taught
American Civil War Culture
Early American Writing
Contemporary American Poetry
Modernist Poetry
Contemporary Critical Theory
Survey of African American Literature
Introductory and advanced courses in writing poetry
Books and articles
“’Drums off the Phantom Battlements’: Dickinson’s War Poems in Discursive Context.” Emily Dickinson Companion. Mary Loeffelholz and Martha Nell Smith, eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. 107-132.
“’They answered him aloud’: Popular Voice and Nationalist Discourse in Melville’s Battle-Pieces.” Leviathan 9 (2007): 35-49.
Review essay: “Public Selves and Private Spheres: Studies of Emily Dickinson and the Civil War, 1984-2007.” Emily Dickinson Journal 16.1 (2007): 92-104.
“Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry. An anthology co-edited with Cristanne Miller for which I wrote the introductory essay. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.
"Addresses to a Divided Nation: Images of War in Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman." Arizona Quarterly 61.4 (Winter 2005): 67-99.
“Inclusion and Exclusion: Fictions of Self and Nation in Whitman and Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson Journal 5.2 (1996): 240-46.
Book in progress“To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave”: American Poetry and the Civil War. This study examines how poets define their allegiances to the nation in the Civil War era. In analyzing a cross-section of literary and popular poets as well as unpublished soldier-poets, I examine these writers' conflicting responses to poetry's political aims, demonstrating that poetry plays a vital role in helping to define new versions of American identity. Under review at U Mass Press.
Academic Honors and AwardsNational Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, part of the “We the People” initiative, January-February 2007.
American Antiquarian Society fellowship, Worcester, MA, September 2006.
W. M. Keck and Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library, San Marino, April-May 2003.
Selected Papers Delivered“Abraham Lincoln and Poetry.” Delivered at the inaugural conference of C-19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Penn State, May 2010.
“In Words War: Writing through the Duncan-Levertov Correspondence.” Invited speaker for a joint presentation and reading with the poet Karl Gartung. Delivered
at “The Truth and Life of Myth: A Robert Duncan Symposium,” sponsored by the Chicago Poetry Project at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, April 2010.
“Thy Sister’s Keeper: Lucy Larcom and the Profession of Poetry.” Delivered at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, October 2009.
“’He’s gone to be a soldier’: Images of Martyrdom in Civil War Song.” Delivered at the American Studies Association, Philadelphia, October 2007.
“’Thou too wilt silent stand’: Nationalist Voice and Popular Allegiances in Melville’s Battle-Pieces.” An invited lecture delivered at the State University of New York at Buffalo, September 2007.
“‘Another War’: Masculine Heroism and Feminine Desire in Sarah Piatt’s Civil War Poems.” Delivered at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference, Philadelphia, November 2006.
“’We are here at our country’s call, boys’: National and Masculine Identity in Soldiers’ Poetry.” Delivered at the American Studies Association, Oakland, CA, October 2006.
“Nationalist Stances, Poetic Genres: Reading Civil War Poetry.” Delivered at the American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 2006.
“Howe, Harper, and Piatt: Voice-Effects in the Civil War Poetry of Three Women Writers.” Delivered at the Modern Language Association, Washington, December 2005.
“Dickinson's Civil War Elegies.” Delivered at the Emily Dickinson International Society conference, Hilo, Hawaii, August 2004.
“The Southern Refugee: George Moses Horton and the Civil War.” Delivered at the American Literature Association conference, San Francisco, May 2004.
“Touching Paradise: Romantic Landscapes in Melville's Poetry.” Delivered at the International Melville Society Conference on Melville and the Pacific. Maui, June 2003.
“The Civil War Landscapes of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.” An invited lecture delivered at Pomona College, November 2002.
“‘Later and Last’: Lyric Voice and Journalistic Text in Melville's Battle-Pieces.” Delivered at the American Literature Association Conference, Long Beach, California, June 2002.
“Addresses to a Divided Nation: Dickinson, Whitman, and the Civil War.” Delivered at the Modern Language Association Conference, Washington D.C., December 2000.
