English Faculty Research

Laurel Bollinger – Science Fiction 

Dr. Bollinger has recently published two articles on science fiction. One examines science fiction's response to Lynn Margulis, particularly her theory of symbiogenesis, which argues that new life forms may emerge from the incorporation of the bacterial "other," most obviously in mitochondria, formerly free-living cellular organisms that now exist in symbiotic relationships with nucleated cells. The second article examines attitudes toward infection in science fiction, arguing that more scientifically-informed writers posit infection as evolutionary rather than primarily as a threat, and that writers who focus on threat often exhibit underlying ambivalences about embodiment itself. Her current project turns to depictions of the Spanish Flu in Katherine Anne Porter

Holly Flint: Ethnic American Fiction, Especially Ideas of Citizenship

Dr. Flint's research and teaching specialize in minority and ethnic American literature, specifically literature written since 1960.  She has published articles on Toni Morrison and Ernesto Quinonez (African-American and Puerto-Rican authors, respectively).  Her on-going research projects deal with the writings of Bharati Mukherjee, Richard Russo, and Sherman Alexie (Indian-American, Italian-American, and Native-American authors, respectively).  In addition to exploring the works published by these authors, Dr. Flint's research advances what she sees as the "use value" of Citizenship Studies to the study of multiethnic American literature.  Moreover, she has published an article on the Moroccan author Fatima Mernissi and is currently revising an essay that addresses the writings of South African author J. M. Coetzee.

Eric Smith, Postmodern and Postcolonial Studies

In his essay "'The Only Way Out is Through': Space, Narrative, and Utopia in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber," forthcoming in Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Dr. Eric Smith considers the recent generic convergence of science fiction, the narrative utopia, and the postcolonial novel as figuring a critical cognitive mapping of the spatial logic of globalization. Forthcoming in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature is Dr. Smith's essay "'Ambiguity at its Best!': Historicizing All About H. Hatterr," in which he positions the 1948 masterpiece of Indian/Pakistani writer G.V. Desani in relation to the discourses of Indian nationalism. Dr. Smith's current works-in-progress include analyses of anglophone Indian writers Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and several recent films.

Joseph Taylor-Medieval Literature and Culture

In his current research, Dr. Taylor examines discourses of regionalism and nationalism within the literature of the Middle Ages. His book-length project studies the medieval origins of the English North-South divide, a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon that continues to haunt England in the present. Taylor addresses the overlooked literary effect of the English North-South divide as it emerges in Latin chronicles, vernacular drama and poetry, and the rhetoric of the medieval English universities. A sample of this work includes his recent essay, "Chaucer's Uncanny Regionalism: Rereading the North in the Reeve's Tale," forthcoming in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, in which he reexamines this Canterbury tale's explicit use of northern dialect as a symptom of Chaucer's anxiety for the North and his desire to assert a distinct English nationalism. Taylor has recently presented his research at a number of conferences in the United States and abroad including the Convention of the Modern Language Association, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and the Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society.