BOOK PUBLICATION: The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the United States from the Civil War through World War II (Harvard University Press, 2002)

Examining literature and culture in the United States from the Civil War through World War II, The Language of War judges the way war trauma is narrated, organized and sometimes reproduced through the work of memory and representation. The book proceeds by developing two primary questions: How does the strategic violence of war affect literary, legal, and philosophical representations? And, in turn, how do such representations affect the reception and initiation of violence itself? Central authors include Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, Generals William Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Joseph Heller. Theoretical authors and texts range from William James and John Dewey to Maurice Blanchot, the Geneva Conventions, and contemporary American organizational sociology and language theory.

More information is available on the Web

PUBLISHED ARTICLES:

• "Atrocity and Interrogation." Critical Inquiry (forthcoming).
• "Emotion and Belief in the American Gothic: A Philosophic and Cognitive- Scientific Approach." American Literature (forthcoming).
• "Language, Violence, and Human Rights Law." Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 11 (Summer 1999): 215-250.
• "Narrating Disease: AIDS, Consent and the Ethics of Representation." Social Text 43 (Fall 1995): 27-44.
• "Truth and Decay in Shakespeare's Sonnets." Cahiers Elisabethains 47 (April 1995): 43-53.
• "Masculinity and Transgression in Robert Frost." American Literature 65 (June 1993): 297-312.
• "Drama and Ethics, Grief and Privacy: The Case of Eugene O'Neill." Eugene O'Neill Review 17 (Spring/Fall 1993): 83-92.
• "Losing It and Getting It Back: A Teacher's Basics for Leading Seminars." Voices of Experience: Observations of Senior Teaching Fellows at Harvard University. Ed. Mary-Ann Winkelmes and James Wilkinson. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
• Encyclopedia Entry: "War Writing." Twayne Literary Voices: American Literature in Historical Context, 1870-1920 (forthcoming).
• Book Review: "Shadows of Ethics." American Literature 73 (December 2001).
• Book Reviews: "The Scandal of Pleasure" and "Modernism and Morality." American Literature 75 (March 2003).

MASS MEDIA:

Newspaper interviews for political and cultural analysis appearing in the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian (England) [reprinted in the Tallahassee Democrat], the Philadelphia Inquirer [multiple], the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, and the Raleigh News and Observer [reprinted in the Sacramento Bee and the Fresno Bee].

Radio interviews for political and cultural analysis recorded by the BBC: "Weekend News" (National), "Good Morning Wales," and "BBC Northhampton" Morning News.

Radio interviews for political and cultural analysis recorded by National Public Radio:

• "The Connection" (nationally syndicated), "Radio Times" (Philadelphia), and "Morning Edition" (Boston). The National Public Radio interviews are available on the Web:
  (1) The Connection (in studio, live, one-hour)
  (2) Radio Times (by telephone, live, one-hour)
  (3) Morning Edition (pre-recorded arts feature with novelist Tim O'Brien, seven minutes)
• Radio interview for political and cultural analysis recorded by WCCO Radio.

  New York Times. Letter to the Editor: "The Metaphor of War." September 14, 2001.

  Washington Post. Letter to the Editor: "Campus Morality." January 2, 2002.

  The New Republic. Letter to the Editor: "Soldier On." October 21, 2002.