English Department Faculty
Faith Barrett
Department of English
Lawrence University
711 E Boldt Way
Appleton, WI 54911
faith.barrett@lawrence.edu
Education
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, July 2000, University of California, Berkeley
M.F.A. in Poetry, May 1993, University of Iowa
M.A. in Comparative Literature, December 1990, University of California, Berkeley
B.A. in Comparative Literature, June 1987, Swarthmore College
Employment
Lawrence University
Spring 2010 to present: Chair, Department of English
Fall 2009 to present: Associate Professor of English
Fall 2003 to Spring 2009: Assistant Professor of English
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Fall 2000 to Spring 2003: Assistant Professor of English
Book and Essay Publications
“’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: A Journal of Melville Studies 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.
Work 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 In analyzing a cross-section of literary and popular poets as well as unpublished soldier-poets, I examine these writers' conflicting responses to poetry's political aims, demonstrating that poetry plays a vital role in helping to define new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. I have an advance contract for this project with the University of Massachusetts Press, and the manuscript is currently under review there.
Academic Honors and Awards
National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, part of the “We the People” initiative, January-February 2007.
American Antiquarian Society fellowship, Worcester, MA, September 2006.
Dean’s Research Grants, Lawrence University, for archival research at the Huntington Library (June 2007), the Newberry Library (June 2006), the Library of Congress (August 2005), and the American Antiquarian Society (August 2004).
Young Teacher Award, an award for excellence in teaching given to one junior faculty member each year. Lawrence University, Spring 2006.
W. M. Keck and Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library, San Marino, April-May 2003.
Dean's Research Grant, Cal Poly Pomona, for Dickinson and Melville research at Amherst College and Harvard University, June 2002.
Academic Affairs Faculty Research Grant, Cal Poly Pomona, Spring 2002.
Dean's Research Grant, College of Letters and Arts, Cal Poly Pomona for Dickinson manuscript research at Amherst College and Harvard University, June 2001.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor, University of California, Berkeley. May 1999.
Teaching Effectiveness Award, University of California, Berkeley. May 1999.
Phi Beta Kappa Fellowship (Northern California Association), Fall 1998.
Townsend Dissertation Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. 1997-98.
California Regent’s Dissertation Fellowship, Spring 1997.
Eisner Prize for Poetry, University of California, April 1994.
Fulbright scholarship to West Germany, 1987-88.
Phi Beta Kappa, 1987.
Reviews
Review of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Resources for American Literary Study, volume 33, 2010.
Review of Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry edited by Paula Bennett, Karen Kilcup and Philipp Schweighauser (Modern Language Association, 2007). Forthcoming in 2010 in Legacy: A Journal of Women Writers.
Review of John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea Pieces edited by Douglass Robillard (Kent State University Press, 2006). Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 10.3 (October 2008): 117-120.
Headnote for “James Greenleaf Whittier.” Thomson Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2, 1800-1865 (2008). Edited by Shirley Samuels. General editor Jay Parini.
Review of Measures of Possibility: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts by Domhnall Mitchell (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). New England Quarterly (September 2006): 512-513.
Review of Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading by Virginia Jackson (Princeton University Press, 2005). Emily Dickinson Journal 15.1 (2006): 100-103.
Review of From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women's Poetry by Mary Loeffelholz (Princeton University Press, 2004). Legacy: A Journal of Women Writers 22.2 (2005): 196-197.
Poetry Publications
Invisible Axis (poetry chapbook). Etherdome Press, Berkeley, CA, 2001.
Poems in New American Writing 17 (spring 1999) and the Germ (April 1999). Poems in Rooms, Idiom, and the Berkeley Poetry Review.
“An Interview with James Galvin,” with Brian Young. The Iowa Review 24.1 (Winter 1994): 109-27.
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.
“Emily Dickinson and American Civil War Poetry.” Invited speaker for “The War Now: Duncan, Levertov and the Poetics of War,” a one-day conference hosted by Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee, February 2009.
“Battle Hymns for a Divided Nation: Poetry and Popular Song in the Civil War Era.” Delivered at the Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, November 2007.
“’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.
"'The Sound of Liberty': Romantic Soliloquy and Stances of Address in Frederick Douglass and George Moses Horton." Delivered at the Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville international conference sponsored by the Melville Society, New Bedford, MA, June 2005.
"'The Speakers of the Idiom': The Rhetoric of Lyric Voice in Myung Mi Kim's Commons." Delivered at "Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement," U.C. Irvine, November 2004.
"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.
"An Introduction to Elizabeth Bishop." Delivered at the Songfest Concert Series in conjunction with musical settings of Bishop poems by John Harbison. Zipper Concert Hall, Colburn School for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles, November 2002.
"Rules of Engagement: Lyric Voice in the Work of Myung Mi Kim." Delivered at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, Western Washington University, Bellingham, November 2002.
"'Would I Burn Palaces?': The Civil War Stances of Sarah Piatt." Delivered at the New Frontiers in Early American Literature Conference, University of Virginia, August 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.
"'My Dear, Deare Lord, I Do Thee Saviour Call': Addresses to God in Edward Taylor and Emily Dickinson." Delivered at the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, Trondheim, Norway, August 2001.
“Addresses to a Divided Nation: Dickinson, Whitman, and the Civil War.” Delivered at the Modern Language Association Conference, Washington D.C., December 2000.
“The Battlefield Landscapes of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.” Delivered at the American Literature Association Conference, Long Beach, California, May 2000.
“‘The Word Made Flesh’: Blasphemy and the Lyric Address in Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Dickinson.” Delivered at the American Conference on Romanticism at U. C. Santa Barbara, October 1998.
“The Gift of the Poem: Lyric Address in Emily Dickinson and Stéphane Mallarmé.” Delivered at the Modern Language Association Conference, Toronto, December 1997.
“Inclusion and Exclusion: Fictions of Self and Nation in Whitman and Dickinson.” Delivered at the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, Innsbruck, Austria, August 1995.
"With Tyrannous Eye: The American Landscapes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Cole." Delivered at the Berkeley Symposium on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Visual Representation, U.C. Berkeley, March 1995.
Teaching Interests
Nineteenth-Century American Studies; American Civil War Culture; Race and Gender in Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Twentieth-Century American Poetry; Puritanism; Modern Lyric Poetry in English, French, and German.
Teaching Experience
California State University, Pomona and Lawrence University
Lower division courses
Creative writing: Introductory Poetry Workshop.
Literature: Introduction to Poetry, Survey of American Literature (1620-1865), Introduction to Literary Analysis, Major American Writers, and Freshman Studies (an interdisciplinary course in World Literatures and Cultures), Survey of African-American Literature.
Upper division courses
Creative writing: Advanced Poetry Workshop and Literary Magazine Editing.
Literature: Advanced Literary Analysis, Race and Gender in Modern American Literature, Early American Literature, the American Renaissance, American Culture and the Civil War, Modernist Poetry, Contemporary American Poetry, Contemporary Critical Theory.
Graduate literature seminars (at Cal Poly Pomona)
Introduction to Graduate Research in English, Studies in Puritan Literature and Culture; American Poetry of the Civil War, American Travel Narratives and Slave Narratives of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, and the American Renaissance and the Literature of the Reform Movements.
Academic Service, Lawrence University
Chair, committee on Honors, Sept 07 to June 09. Representative to the committee on Honors, Sept 04 to June 07.
Organizer and host for the English department's visiting poets’ series, including readings by Rebecca Wolff, Laura Solórzano, Dolores Dorantes, Jen Hofer, Elizabeth Willis, Karl Gartung, Chuck Stebelton, Katy Lederer, Lyn Hejinian, Ilya Kutik, Elizabeth Robinson, Allan Michael Parker, Cole Swensen, Lisa Fishman, Robert Creeley, William Fuller, and Gillian Conoley, as well as 2-3 student readings per year. Sept 03 to present.
Faculty judge for the English department's poetry prizes, April 04-present.
Co-organizer for an Associated Colleges of the Midwest colloquium on new approaches to teaching the Civil War; co-organizer for an interdisciplinary symposium on Civil War studies that featured David Blight, Kirk Savage, and Franny Nudelman as invited speakers, April 2005.
Organizer of and participant in the American Studies Working Group for university faculty in Northeastern Wisconsin, April 2005 to present.
Instructor, Mielke Institute in the Liberal Arts (an enrichment program for area K-12 teachers) June 2005.
Academic Service, Cal Poly Pomona
Faculty advisor for the departmental literary magazine Spring Harvest, 2000-2001.
Faculty advisor for a student-edited literary magazine that I launched, the Pomona Valley Review. Fall 2001 to spring 2003.
Organizer and host for the department's first Poetry and Fiction Reading Series. Spring 2001-spring 2003.
Department representative to the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences Learning and Teaching Committee, Fall 2000-Spring 2002. Committee chair, 2001-2002.
Member of the English and Foreign Languages Strategic Planning Committee, 2000-2001.
Service to Professional Societies
Summer 2009 to present: Board member for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers
Other Professional Memberships
Modern Language Association, Emily Dickinson International Society, Herman Melville Society, C-19: The Society for Nineteenth-Century American Studies, and participant in the Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers Working Group.
References
Cristanne Miller, Professor, English Department, University at Buffalo
Samuel Otter, Professor, English Department, U.C. Berkeley.
Paula Bernat Bennett, Professor (retired), English Department, University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale.
Nancy Ruttenburg, Professor, English and Comparative Literature, New York University
Karen Hoffmann, Associate Professor, English Department, Lawrence University.
Edward Rocklin, Professor, English Department, Cal Poly Pomona.
