Professor Damon Franke
Associate Professor
Bio
Damon teaches a wide variety of courses on literature, culture, writing, and critical analysis, and he strives to bring literature to life for his students. His recent courses include Nonfiction Creative Writing, American Literature and Culture of the 1990s, Bestsellers of the 1970s, and Literature of New Orleans. His publications include a study of the origins of modernism, Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883-1924 and articles in Studies in the Novel, James Joyce Quarterly, The Journal of Narrative Theory, Mississippi Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Prose, English Language Notes, and European Joyce Studies. His current book projects involve a study of the philosophy of “becoming” in the works of James Joyce, and a genealogy of environmental thought in Edwardian literature with the working title The Organic Edwardians. He also sponsors the Gulf Coast chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society.
- PHD - University of Iowa (2003)
- MA - University of Georgia (1995)
- BA - University of California-Berkeley (1991)
Graduate Seminar: Modernism and Totality
Graduate Seminar: British Literatures of the Environment (with Nicolle Jordan)
Senior Seminar: The Irish Renaissance
Senior Seminar: Edwardian Literatures of the Environment
Senior Seminar: Generation X Literature and Culture (4 times)
Senior Seminar: Ulysses and Its Contexts
Senior Seminar: Nine Lives: Autobiography and Memoir
Senior Seminar: Literature of New Orleans and Southern Mississippi
Senior Seminar: Literature of New Orleans: The Carnivalesque City (twice)
Senior Seminar: Millennial Literature and Culture
Senior Seminar: Youth Culture between Two Deaths
History of the English Language (twice)
Nonfiction Creative Writing (5 times)
Popular Fiction: How To Get Away with Murder
Popular Fiction: Bestsellers of the 1970s
Survey of Contemporary Literature: Literature of New Orleans and Southern
Mississippi
Survey of British Literature, 1789 to present: The Utopian Unconscious (14 times)
Survey of British Literature, 1789 to present: Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, Postmodernism
Survey of Modern Poetry (4 times)
American Literature since 1945: 1968 in Literature, Film, and Music
Survey of the American Novel, 1920-60: Genre and Film
Survey of the American Novel: 1962: A Wrinkle in Time and the Paradigms of
Postmodernism
Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Cruising the Caribbean (twice)
Studies in World Literature: Greatest Love Stories
Studies in World Literature: World Masterpieces of Cinematic Fiction
Survey of the Modern Novel: Synthesis and the Synthetic
Survey of the Modern Novel: Turn of the Century Adventure and Romance
Studies in British Literature: Religion and the Origins of Modernism
Studies in British Literature: The Life and Works of James Joyce
Analysis of Literature: How To Do Things with Words (13 times)
Literary Study of the Bible (3 times)
Introduction to Poetry: Beauty, Being, Verse (7 times)
Introduction to Drama
World Literature: Paths to Enlightenment (3 times)
World Literature: Page-Turners and the Ways of Reading (31 times)
Rhetoric and Composition: The Composition of Values (13 times)
Modernist Heresies (as part of Seely Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship)
The Third Reich and Literature (with Astrid Oesmann)
Narrative Literature: The Persistence of Myth
Biblical and Classical Literature: Literary Genre and Ancient Culture
Interpretation of Literature: Imagining History (7 times)
- Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883-1924, 2008, https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Franke%20Modernist.html
- "Corley's Aspirations and Gumley's Dreams in 'Eumaeus'", James Joyce Quarterly, 2021, 10.1353/jjq.2021.0018
- "The Countercultural Legacy of Generation X in Twin Peaks", Gen X at Middle Age in Popular Culture, 2020
- "Nostalgia and the Kiss of Ulysses in Twin Peaks", James Joyce and the Arts, European Joyce Studies, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004426191_012
- "Vachel Lindsay at Gulf Park, 1923 to 1924", Mississippi Quarterly, 2019, 10.1353/mss.2016.0001
- "The Resurrection of Being in the Ricorso of Finnegans Wake", James Joyce Quarterly, 2007, 10.1353/jjq.0.0038
- "Hardy's Ur-Priestess and the Phases of a Novel", Studies in the Novel, 2007
- "The 'Curious' Pagan Spirit of Pater's The Renaissance", Nineteenth-Century Prose, 2004
- "In the 'nummifeed confusionary': Reading the Negative Confession of Finnegans Wake", Journal of Narrative Theory, 2000, 10.1353/jnt.2011.0021
- "Christopher Merrill", Twentieth Century American Nature Poets, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 2008
- Modern Language Association
- International James Joyce Foundation
- Association for the Study of Literature of the Environment
- Society for Utopian Studies
- Utopian Studies Society
- English (Native or Bilingual)
- Italian (Limited Working)
- German (Limited Working)