Home

Curriculum Vitae

Teaching Philosophy

Michael J. Powers
Curriculum Vitae

Department of English
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Indiana, PA 15705-1094
mpowers@grove.iup.edu

Employment

Assistant Professor (non-tenure track), Indiana University of Pennsylvania, September 1999-Present.

Teaching Associate, University of California, Irvine, September 1993-June 1998.

Education

Ph.D. English, September 1999, University of California, Irvine.

M.A. English, March 1994, University of California, Irvine.

A.B. English (magna cum laude with honors in major), May 1990, University of Pennsylvania.

Doctoral Dissertation

Modernist Institutions: Representing and Resisting Institutions in Joyce, Stein, and Lewis.

While modernists often defined themselves by their opposition to dominant social institutions, such as schools, the family, and the art establishment, modernist ideas have become a part of these institutions. My dissertation explores the ways in which the works of three literary modernists deal with the dilemmas of institutionalization, and seeks to understand the extent to which such works retain their oppositional force, even as they become canonized and themselves the focus of resistance.

Committee: Margot Norris, chair; Rey Chow; Brook Thomas.

Publications

"Issy's Mimetic Night Lessons: Vico, Interpellation, and Resistance in Finnegans Wake." Joyce Studies Annual (Forthcoming, June 2000).

"Computer Resources for Student Writers at UCI." With Eric Friedman and Mark Mullen. A Student Guide to Writing at UCI. 6th ed. Edina, MN: Burgess International, 1998. 387-408.

Conference Papers

"Mythametics, Aristmystic, and Rhythmatick: Finnegans Wake's Dialectic of Enlightenment," 17th International James Joyce Symposium, London, England, June 2000.

"'What man would wish to be got up as a girl?': Wyndham Lewis's Gender Theory, Mimesis, and the Apes of God," Imagining the Space Between: Constructing Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, London, Ontario, May 2000.

"Kinds of Kin: Mary Maxworthing, Mabel Linker, and Ideologies of the Nineteenth-Century Family in Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans," Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, February 2000.

"Wyndham Lewis as Original Ape," The New Modernisms Conference, State College, Pennsylvania, October 1999.

"Issy's Girlic Teangue: Iteration and Resistance at the Origin of the Subject," Millennial Joyce Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, June 1999.

"'All my TAs have different opinions...': Listening to Student Reactions to Process," Conference on College Composition and Communication, Atlanta, Georgia, March 1999.

"Haunted Urban Geography: 'An Encounter,'" Miami Joyce Birthday Conference, Miami, Florida, February 1999.

"'But Coming Up with Questions is Easy': Advanced Biology Students in the Composition Classroom," Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, Illinois, March 1998.

"'Nightlessons': A Probapossible Prolegomena to Ideareal History," Historical Joyce/Hysterical Joyce Conference, Toronto, Ontario, June 1997.

"Building Real-Life Communities in Virtual Spaces," Computers and Writing Conference, Logan, Utah, May 1996.

"Murdering All the English He Knew: Testimony and Nationalism in the Trial of Festy King," 15th International James Joyce Symposium, Zurich, Switzerland, June 1996.

"The Curiously Sublime Logic of Edgar Huntly," International Gothic Conference, Stirling, Scotland, 1995.

Fellowships and Awards

Dorothy and Donald Strauss Endowed Dissertation Fellowship, 1998-99.

UC Irvine Humanities Center Grant, 1998.

Creating the James Joyce Librarium, an online, searchable bibliography of texts read by James Joyce.

UC Irvine Humanities Summer Dissertation Fellowship, 1997.

UC Irvine Humanities Research Grant, 1996.

Used to conduct dissertation research at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, June 1996.

DAAD German Studies Summer Fellowship, 1993.

UC Irvine Chancellor's Fellowship, 1992-96.

Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania, 1990.

Haney Prize for Best Senior English Honors Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1990.

Teaching Experience

Professor, Humanities Literature (at Indiana, 2 semesters).

Introduction to literature for non-majors. Fall section examined a variety of texts via the theme of romantic love. Texts included Shakespeare, Sonnets and As You Like It; Sidney, Astrophil and Stella; Congreve, The Way of the World; Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Stein, Three Lives; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Spring sections focus on African-American literature, especially the Harlem Renaissance.

Professor, Research Writing (at Indiana, 2 semesters).

Composition course covering the basics of college level research and argument. Students selct and research topics on which they write papers in a variety of modes. For final project, groups of students intervene in the problems they have researched, creating editorials, pamphlets, or Web sites.

Discussion section leader, Humanities Core Course (at Irvine, 3 quarters).

Interdisciplinary introduction to reading and writing in classics, history, philosophy, and literature. Texts included Homer, Odyssey; Virgil, Aeneid; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Bacon, Novum Organum; Locke, Second Treatise on Government; Darwin, Origin of Species; Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"; Silko, Ceremony.

Instructor, Advanced Expository Writing: Language, Science, Objectivity (at Irvine, 3 quarters).

Composition course for upper-division students designed to develop students' ability to read and write across disciplines. Original syllabi encouraged students to consider the ways in which different disciplines construct objectivity. Readings from Freud, New Introductory Lectures; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science; Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; J. M. Coetzee, Foe; Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.

Instructor, Introduction to British Literature: Tragic and Comic Vision (at Irvine, 2 quarters).

Survey course on all periods of British drama. Original syllabi included Everyman; Shakespeare, King Lear, Midsummer Night's Dream, 2 Henry IV; Congreve, The Way of the the World; Byron, Manfred; Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Beckett, Happy Days; Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound.

Teaching assistant, Literature of the Early Republic (at Irvine).

Assisted Professor Myron Simon. Survey course on American literature and the formation of national identity from the revolution to 1830. Readings from Franklin, Rowson, Brockden Brown, Irving, Longfellow, Cooper, Emerson. Lectured on Brockden Brown.

Instructor, Research and Argument (at Irvine, 5 quarters).

Quarter-long research and writing projects on student-selected topics.

Instructor, Expository Writing (at Irvine, 4 quarters).

Introductory writing class.

Academic Service

Research assistant, Electric B Project.

Designed Electricity, a collaborative Web environment for the publication of a student-edited journal. Pilot sections begin in fall 1999.

Chair, "Cultured Spaces" panel, Revolutions Conference, Irvine, California, 12 October 1997.

Organizing committee for disChord: A Conference on Contemporary Music, Los Angeles, California, 9-11 May 1997.

Reader, University of California Subject A Examination, April 1997.

System-wide writing examination.

Graduate student representative, Department of English and Comparative Literature Executive Committee, UC Irvine, 1996-97.

Faculty consultant, UC Irvine's Electronic Educational Environment, June 1996-September 1997.

Designed and documented Internet tools for courses; trained faculty and students in their use.

Chair, Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, and English Graduate Student Association, UC Irvine, 1995-96.

Co-founder, Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, and English Graduate Student Association, UC Irvine, 1995.

Formed organization to represent graduate students at the department level.

School of Humanities Internet Resources Group, UC Irvine, September 1995-May 1996.

Trained faculty and graduate students in use of the Internet for instruction via workshops and seminars.

Professional Affiliations

Modern Language Association

Conference on College Composition and Communication

International James Joyce Foundation

Modernist Studies Association

Languages

German: proficiency in reading and translating.

French: proficiency in reading and translating.

Dossier

Career Center
University of California, Irvine
100 Student Services I
Irvine, CA 92697-2075

Teaching Portfolio

Available upon request.