CV

Education

Brown University (2019–2026)

Candidate for PhD in Comparative Literature

University of North Carolina at Asheville (1/2017–12/2018)

Post-Bac classes in Education, English Literature, Ancient Greek, Latin

University of North Carolina at Asheville

B.A. in Classics, emphasis in Ancient Greek and Latin (5/2011)

Honors Thesis: casket of song / cast off the Tomb: ΕΠΙΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΑ ΚΑΛΛΙΜΑΧΟΥ

Dissertation

Title: A Critical Edition of Ronald Johnson’s ARK: The Foundations

Director: Kenneth Haynes (chair of Comparative Literature, Brown), Cole Swensen (Professor Emerita of Literary Arts, Brown), Peter O’Leary (Professor of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Heather Cole (Special Collections Instruction and Curator, John Hay Library at Brown University)

An edition of the first-third of Johnson’s late modernist epic poem with a text established from inspection of thousands of drafts, letters, and other papers in Johnson’s archives (as well as the archives of his patrons, friends, publishers). The whole of the edition includes a long introduction—the poet’s life, the genesis and development of the poem, history of the poem’s critical reception, explanation of the method of textual editing used—the text of the poem, and a commentary on each of the thirty-three sections, including both each section’s textual history and its sources.

Conferences, awards, publications, grants

2025: contributor to and bibliographer for The Wren the Mind Allows to Sing: A colloquium concerning itself with Peter O’Leary’s trilogy: Phosphorescence of Thought, Earth Is Best, The Hidden Eyes of Things (Dos Madres Press), edited by Billie Chernicoff

2/25: Paper: ‘Some Notes on the Esoteric in Ronald Johnson’s ARK: The Foundations.’ ‘Poetry and Magic’ panel at Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture

Spring/Fall 23: Doctoral Research Travel Grants (Brown Graduate School) to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas and to Chicago, IL for dissertation research at the private residence of Ronald Johnson’s literary executor

5/23: Paper: ‘With nary a publisher in sight’: Self-Publication and Ronald Johnson’s ARK.’ ‘Morphing in Print’ panel at Harvard-Yale-Brown Graduate Conference in Book History

2022: Albert Spaulding Cook Prize for essay ‘”by a flickering torch”: Hallucination and Passage in the Poetry of Robert Duncan’ (Brown University)

Teaching

teacher’s assistant for the following courses and professors:

COLT 1422M Reading the Short Story (Fall 2025). Vangelis Calotychos.

COLT 0710Q The Odyssey in Literature and Film (Spring 2025). Vangelis Calotychos.

COLT 0510K The 1001 Nights (Spring 2023). Elias Muhanna.

COLT 1710C Literary Translation Workshop (Fall 2022). Esther Whitfield.

COLT 0710C Introduction to Scandinavian Literature (Spring 2022). Arnold Weinstein.

COLT 1810P Literature and Medicine (Fall 2021). Arnold Weinstein.

COLT 0810O Civilization and Its Discontents (Spring 2021). Arnold Weinstein.

COLT 1420T The Fiction of Relationship (Fall 2020). Arnold Weinstein.

Service

2020–21: Graduate Student Representative for Comparative Literature Department at the Graduate Student Council at Brown

Experience

Fall 24: ‘Victorian Literary Knowledge Proctorship, Department of Comparative Literature.’ Completed under direction of Kenneth Haynes.

This proctorship involved the creation of an attribution index de-anonymizing the contributors to Notes and Queries. I deciphered Victorian cursive handwriting from scans of a unique marked set (originally the property of the publisher or editor) of Notes and Queries volumes, transcribed the information into a database, including entries for habitat, sex, dates, and other information concerning the anonymous contributors. The project was part of a larger one including partners in the English Department, Wellesley College and Special Collections, University of Newcastle. The skills involved in the proctorship’s execution included those in digital humanities, archival research (including paleographical training), periodical studies, and the history of literary knowledge (the transformation of amateur into professional knowledge in the Victorian period).

Languages

English, Ancient Greek, Latin; French and Old Occitan (reading)

Academic publications

In Progress: A Descriptive Bibliography of the Works of Ronald Johnson (book)

In Progress: A Critical Edition of ARK: The Foundations (book)

Selected literary publications:

in journals and anthologies (unless otherwise specified), all poetry unless noted:

2011

editor and publisher of poetry, arts, & and sound magazine from a Compos’t (2011–ongoing: https://www.fromacompost.com/)

2012–13

First Ayres (Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2013), chapbook

2014

The Solitary Plover (2014–23, poems in many issues of this publication dedicated to the legacy of Lorine Niedecker) (ed. Amy Lutzke)

2015

‘A Particle Georgics’, TELLUS Magazine (Cambridge UK) (ed. Alisa Hunt)
‘starlings / spurt out…’, ‘Hymn XX / Vulcan hums, out of Lawson’, ‘I take for my meter…’, Hambone 21 (ed. Nathaniel Mackey)

2016

‘Is my bow for killing…’, ‘V I R G I N I A’, ‘Grouped Works out of Euripides, Hugh of Fouilloy, Bion, Herodotus, Pindar, Dante, Homer, Peire Vidal, & Lorca’, ‘“From a Winnower of Corn to the Winds”’, Chicago Review 59.04/60.01 (ed. Patrick Morrissey)

2017

‘Anti-Ailinos’, ‘And Dizzy Swum in Darkness’, ‘Gazette for Dear Patrick’, Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press), anthology edited by Nathaniel Mackey, Anne Waldman, Michael Boughn, et al.

2018

‘“What Whim Has Wrought”’, an interview of Kent Johnson and Michael Boughn conducted for Chicago Review (23 July 2018)
book review of Thomas Meyer’s Modern Love Songs in Dispatches from the Poetry Wars (24 September 2018)

2021

‘Review of I am, Am I by Evan Kennedy’, Caesura Magazine (14 January 2021), book review
‘Review of Uncanny Resonance, Book Two by Whit Griffin’, Caesura Magazine (23 February 2021), book review

2022

GUD-IGA- (The Swan pamphlet series, no. 16, May 2022) (ed. Joel Newberger)
RONSARD / WELL (The Swan pamphlet series, no. 22, October 2022)

2023

The Fire (New Books, 2023), full-length book [review by Patrick James Dunagan for periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics: https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2024/06/patrick-james-dunagan-fire-by-steven.html]

References

Kenneth Haynes

Chair of Comparative Literature, Professor of Classics

Brown University

401.863.3616

kenneth_haynes@brown.edu

Arnold Weinstein

Richard & Edna Saloman Distinguished Emeritus of Comparative Literature

Brown University

401.272.2186

arnold_weinstein@brown.edu

Esther Whitfield