Michael Tavel Clarke
Positions
Associate Professor
Contact information
Phone number
Office: +1 (403) 220-4677
Background
Educational Background
Ph.D. English, University of Iowa, 2001
M.A. English, University of Iowa, 1996
B.A. English, Biology, Wesleyan University, Connecticut, 1990
Biography
I study and teach U.S. literature and culture since the Civil War, with special interests in cultural studies, theories of size and scale, theories of the body, gender studies, democracy theory, post-Marxist theory, and postcolonial theory. I have written a book on the American obsession with bigness and its implications for ideas about the body, co-edited a collection with David Wittenberg on scale in literature and culture, and published articles on a range of topics, including naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, U.S. film, U.S. imperialism, Indigenous literature, Jewish-American literature, African-American literature, and other topics. I offer graduate courses in U.S. literature, modernism, democracy theory, and post-Marxist theory. I am happy to supervise doctoral and master’s students in any of the areas listed above. I have won a teaching award at the University of Iowa and was nominated for awards at the University of Calgary, and I co-edit the journal ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature with Faye Halpern.
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| ENGL 465 | American Literature since the Mid-1900s | 2024 |
| ENGL 253 | Poetry | 2024 |
| ENGL 685 | Literature and Democracy | 2023 |
| ENGL 251 | Love and Romance in Literature | 2023 |
| ENGL 463 | American Literature from the Late 1800s to the Mid-1900s | 2022 |
Awards
- Insight Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) . 2020
- Nomination for Teaching Excellence Award, 2007
- Nomination for Teaching Excellence Award, 2005
Publications
- Work and Fraternity in Levine's "What Work Is". The Explicator. (2024)
- Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, and the International Discourse of the Little Man. Modernism/modernity. 849-69. (2022)
- Too Close for Context: Where Students Get Stuck When Close Reading. Jaclyn Carter, Michael Tavel Clarke, Faye Halpern, Derritt Mason, Jessica Nicol, Morgan Vanek. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 349-71. (2022)
- The New Modernist Studies, Anthropology, and N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain. Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 385-420. (2017)
- Between Wall Street and Fifth Avenue: Class and Status in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. College Literature. 342-74. (2016)
- The New Naturalism: Cormac McCarthy, Frank Norris, and the Question of Postmodernism. Studies in American Naturalism. 52-78. (2014)
- Disability, Spectatorship, and The Station Agent. Disability Studies Quarterly. (2014)
- Robert Frost's "Design". The Explicator. 114-17. (2014)
- "I Feel Close to Myself": Solipsism and U.S. Imperialism in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. College Literature. 130-54. (2013)
- Danny DeVito’s Body. Genders. (2008)
- Lessons from the Past: The Cliff Dwellers and New Historicism. Western American Literature. 395-425. (2008)
- Andrometer. Victorian Review. 22-28. (2008)
- Scale in Literature and Culture. Michael Tavel Clarke; David Wittenberg. Palgrave Macmillan. (2017)
- These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865-1930. University of Michigan Press. (2007)
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