Claire A. Culleton, Ph.D. English (U. of Miami)
Professor
Telephone: 330.672.1709
Fax: 330.672.3152
E-mail: cculleto at kent.edu
Office: 302-D Satterfield Hall
Fall 2009 Office Hours: M/W 2:00-3:30
Claire A. Culleton, Ph.D. English (U. of Miami)
Professor
Telephone: 330.672.1709
Fax: 330.672.3152
E-mail: cculleto at kent.edu
Office: 302-D Satterfield Hall
Fall 2009 Office Hours: M/W 2:00-3:30
Professor
Telephone: 330.672.1709
Fax: 330.672.3152
E-mail: cculleto at kent.edu
Office: 302-D Satterfield Hall
Fall 2009 Office Hours: M/W 2:00-3:30
Fall 2009 Courses:
Thank you for visiting my English Department homepage. Let me tell you a little about my current research, my published work, and my teaching.ENG 22070: Major Modern Writers: British, Irish, and American
ENG 25002: Literature in English II
My research interests include 20th century Irish, British, and American literature and culture. I have written three books focused on this period—-Joyce and the G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover’s Manipulation of Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1921 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), Names and Naming in Joyce (University of Wisconsin Press, 1994)—and have co-edited two books focused on literary modernism, as well: Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
I am currently working on a project that focuses attention on the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Irish nationalism, and the Irish Literary Revival. The GAA’s role in athleticizing Ireland’s post-famine generations, strengthening her nationalist movement, and promoting cultural revival in Ireland at times presaged and at other times challenged the proselytizing work of Irish literary revivalists who were bent on reanimating Irish literature and culture by engaging Irish myths and legends that once proclaimed her glories. In this book-length project, I tease out the relationship between these two powerful groups—both so central to the modern and Free State Irish aesthetic—and reveal a history vexed by corruption, disingenuity, and intrigue. How these two groups succeeded in shaping and directing pre-Free State (i.e., pre-1922) Irish culture even when at odds with each other marks the center of my project’s focus.
My work in the field of modern and twentieth-century Irish literature and culture led to my appointment in 2004 as General Editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s new book series in Irish and Irish American literature. The first book in the series was published in 2007; five titles followed in 2008-09, and three others are due out in the next year.
I love my job and can’t imagine doing anything else. Sometimes I think a stanza from Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” sums up my academic life perfectly. He wrote, “I do not know which to prefer . . . / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.” Like him, I don’t know which I like better: teaching a great class, or just coming off teaching a great class; working on writing a book, or just coming off working on writing a book; reading some great student work, or just having read some great student work. Not a bad quandary, when you think of all the people you know who hate their jobs.
I have won several teaching awards since graduating from the University of Miami’s doctoral program in 1989 and coming to Kent State, including “Professor of the Year” from the Panhellenic Council at the University of Miami and the 1999 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Kent State University Alumni Association and the University Foundation. After twenty years at Kent, my graduate teaching includes seminars on international modernism, British and American modernists, modern British and Irish novels, 20th-century British and Irish literature, Irish Postcolonial Literature, modern Irish fiction and poetry, seminars on James Joyce and Irish literature and culture, a course I developed for graduate assistants called “Teaching Modernism with Emerging Technologies,” and the required doctoral Methods course. This fall I am teaching two of my favorite courses, Major Modern Writers and Literature in English II.
Since my hire in 1990, I have directed four doctoral dissertations in the English department: one on James Joyce that was published as a book with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2003; one on A. S. Byatt and the profession; one on modernist hagiography; and another in-progress dissertation focusing on the Oedipal in twentieth century Irish fiction. One of my dissertation students was awarded the University’s highest award for dissertation research (the David B. Smith Award), and two have received the English Department’s highest award for dissertation scholarship—congratulations to Sean Murphy and Melissa Jones for writing such engaging work. In addition, I have directed several Masters theses and have examined nearly two dozen students in Ph.D. and M.A. qualifying exams in my field.
Why not come by and chat? My office is on the third floor of Satterfield Hall—302D. I’d be happy to talk with you about being or becoming an English major or to discuss the trials and tribulations of teaching or the realities of graduate work. In my office I’ve got a commercial-grade espresso machine and a mini fridge stocked with sodas, waters, and seltzers. So you know where to find me. Until then, take care. I hope to see you, and I look forward to watching you succeed in your studies at Kent State University.
Interesting links:
An article about the student artwork that adorns my office walls:
http://www.kent.edu/SuccessStories/FacultyStaff/Archives/Culleton.cfm
One of my favorite things: A really good thesaurus for people who think visually, the Visual Thesaurus:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/
And a delicious recipe for Hungarian Goulash