Mesa Verde Alumni

Laird Christensen
 
        Laird is one of the founding members of Mesa Verde. He completed his PhD in 1999, producing a dissertation entitled "Spirit Astir in the World: Sacred Poetry in the Age of Ecology." He has served ASLE as Graduate Liaison from 1995-97 and as a member of the Executive Council from 2002-04. He is currently Associate Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Green Mountain College, an environmental liberal arts college in Poultney, Vermont, where he was the founding director of the Environmental Studies Graduate program. He has published poems and essays in a variety of books and journals, and has co-edited two collections of essays: Teaching About Place: Learning from the Land (Nevada UP, 2008) and Teaching North American Environmental Literature (MLA, 2008).
 
Nina Forsberg
During my first year in the program, I became interested in the non-traditional author and in exploring the possibilities of viewing as literature the journal entries and essays of scientists and workers, particularly from eighteenth-century scientific ventures. Specifically, the problematic role of the scientist as objective observer with possible imperialistic incentive seemed intriguing. I also enjoy wandering around in the Oregon outdoors and noticing the birds wherever I go.

Jason Schreiner

I graduated with a Masters in Environmental Studies in Winter 2007 and completed a thesis entitled "The Roots of Life: Marx's Concept of Social Metabolism and the Dialectics of Corporeal Praxis." The thesis reconstructs Marx's method by grounding it in the "first fact" to be established for all historical writing, which, according to Marx, is "corporeal organisation and the consequent relation the rest of nature." Specifically, my thesis specifies the categories Marx constructs for explaining how corporeally-specific human individuals are imbricated within a more-than-human world, and how material production interinvolves human and non-human agents and is thus inherently socio-ecological. My other intellectual interests include the liberation philosophy of Enrique Dussel, and the intriguing intersections among the works of Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Isabelle Stengers.

Rosanna West Walker
I have a BA in history, an MA in folklore, and a Ph.D. in late 19th and early 20th century American and British literature. My dissertation discusses J. M. Barrie's The Little White Bird (1902), the novel in which Peter Pan is introduced. This work is a dark, macabre sub-text to the later Peter Pan stories. Though the central chapters about Peter Pan form a dialogue with the later Peter Pan stories, The Little White Bird is not written for children. An examination of Barrie’s non-fiction also reveals that it is highly autobiographical. Through a close reading of The Little White Bird I explore the duplicity, unfulfilled desire, and sexual anxiety of this first Peter Pan story. I am most identified as a folklorist. I am activist about promoting the stories of the underrepresented rather than those of the dominant corporate culture. I teach writing, literature, and folklore at Lane Community College. I have several published articles about aspects of Peter Pan and also about Willa Cather's The Professor's House.
 

Matt Hawthorne
I'm a second-year Master's student, reading broadly in the field of literature and the environment. Questions of identity in relation to the "separate" natural world, the pastoral, and the American frontier all interest me, as do whitewater and sea kayaking, rafting, and hiking in the coastal forests of Oregon, Washington, and southeast Alaska.
 
Alastair Hunt
Alastair did his MA at the UO, and is currently a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin--Madison.  His dissertation, "The Human Species: Rights, Aesthetics, Romanticism," investigates the invention in the late eighteenth century of rights-bearing human being--the onto-political idea that human beings have rights by virtue of being specifically human.  His research interests are British and German romanticism, rhetoric, literary theory, ethics, rights, politics, aesthetics, and ecocriticism.  He spent the 2007-08 year as a guest student at the Human Rights Center and the graduate program on Forms of Life and Know-how of Living at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

Ryan Hediger

I recently defended my dissertation, "Embodying Ethics: At the Limits of the American Literary Subject."  I show how texts that register embodiment operate at the limits of the human and the literary, exposing those limits.  I argue that this exposure can function ethically in the work of Hemingway, Terry Tempest Williams,  Gary Snyder, and others.  In spare time, I bicycle and kayak. 

Kevin Maier

Kevin teaches literature and environment, American lit, and composition at the University of Alaska Southeast. His 2006 dissertation was titled "The environmental rhetoric of American hunting and fishing narratives: A revisionist history,"chaired by Suzanne Clark. His interests are rhetorical theory, natural history writing, and 19th and 20th century American literature. In his spare time he fishes and rides bikes.

Scott Knickerbocker
Scott is Professor of English and Environmental Studies at The College of Idaho, where he teaches American literature, Environmental Studies, and creative nonfiction writing. He is currently at work on his manuscript, entitled _The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language: Modern Ecopoetics_. His work on poetry lies at the confluence of ecocriticism and new formalism. He can be reached at sknickerbocker@collegeofidaho.edu.
Matt Kuchar
I'm most interested in literature that focuses on the experience of and identification of wilderness and the natural world. Regarding experience, exactly what roles does nature play in constructing the identity of the individual, especially through the sublime? Regarding identification, how do perceptions and definitions of wilderness shift throughout history (even as they "write" history)? Blessed and cursed by an interest in a little of everything, I hope to incorporate travel narratives and natural history writing into my studies. I love getting outside, whether it's climbing, skiing, or loafing about.
 
Sarah McFarland
Sarah is Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. Sarah teaches courses in American literature, women's literature, and literary theory. Her research interests include American environmental literature, ecocritical theory (especially animal studies and ecofeminism), and gender studies. She has written articles and reviews published in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Western American Literature, Proteus, Southwestern American Literature, and Essays in Philosophy, and she has also authored an essay for the 2008 collection Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View. She is currently working on a book manuscript about gendered representations of animals in American nature writing and film.  Her dissertation examined how animals are represented in American literature in ways that reflect issues of gender and power, especially in non-fiction environmental writing of the 20th century.  
 
Rachel Miller       
 I plan to specialize in 19th and 20th century American literature, with emphases on both ecocritical and post-colonial approaches. I am especially interested in the relationship between the subordination and/or exploitation of the natural world and of human groups, especially women and indigenous peoples, and the ways that literature has both sustained and challenged the subjugation of each.
 
Cliff Boyer
I am interested in science and evolutionary theory, as well as representations of human relationships with nature and the        environment, in American literary naturalism. I believe that an examination of determinism (biological, technological, and
environmental), as it is deployed in American Naturalism, will yield insights that will inform current ecocritical discussions.
 
Dan Shea
I'm interested in Marxism and environmentalism, especially in relation to concepts of "reproduction" in late-Victorian and early modernist literature. Also like long walks on the beach
Mathew Branch
Mathew is a folklore student from the University of Wisconsin. He is focusing on Human-Environment interactions with the aim of trying to better understand how we folklorically construct "Nature" and our views of environmental issues. He hopes that this information will be of use to environmental activists so that they can better understand the various cultures they are working with.
Arwen Spicer
My dissertation addressed the impact of Darwinism on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century utopian literature, especially British literature. My master's thesis examined the development of a modern ecological discourse in H. G. Wells's early science fiction. I am also interested in reflections of the environment in science fiction in general.
In my creative science fiction writing, I enjoy delving into ecological context. I remain personally attached to the University of Oregon and am currently employed there as an academic advisor.

 

Kelly Sultzbach
Having narrowly escaped the clutches of a legal career, I am fervently passionate about nearly all aspects of literature and the environment. However, I am gravitating towards ecofeminism and ecocritical issues in modern British and American literature, particularly the affirmation of cyclical renewal, unity with the non-human world, and moments of epiphany in nature during times of war and loss. I defended my dissertation in August 2008.

 

Return to Mesa Verde Home Page
 
Return to English Department Home Page
 
Last Updated 10/07/08