John Michael

Department of English and Visual and Cultural Studies
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
phone (office) 585 275-4974
fax (office) 585 442-5769
email john.michael@rochester.edu

EMPLOYMENT

• Professor of English, U of Rochester, 1988-
• Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, 2004-
• Professor Ndzwyczajny, Instytut Anglistyki, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Poland, 1990-91.
  
• Assistant Professor, English Department, SUNY Geneseo, 1984-1988.
  
• Teaching Assistant, The Humanities Center and The English Department, The Johns Hopkins University, 1978-1984.
  
  

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins University, 1984.
  
• B. A. Cornell University, 1975; cum laude in English, and “with distinction in all subjects.”
  

HONORS, FELLOWSHIPS

• Presidential Fellow, Salzburg Seminars, Salzburg, Austria, 1993.
  
• Fulbright Lecturing Award, Instytut Anglistyki, Uniwersytet warszawski, Poland, 1990-91.
  
• CIES Fellowship, Summer Polish Institute, University of Pittsburgh, 1990.
  
• Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, University of Rochester, 1989.
  
• William B. Kenan Teaching Fellowship for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching, The Johns Hopkins University, 1981 82, 1982 83.
  
• Humanities Center Fellowship for Study in Paris, The Johns Hopkins University, 1980 81.
  
• Human Biology Fellowship, The Johns Hopkins University, 1979 80.
  
• Graduate Fellowship, The Johns Hopkins University, 1977 79.
  

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

• The Failure of America and the Claims of Identity from Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror forthcoming University of Minnesota Press.
  
• Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 2000.
  
• Emerson and Skepticism: The Cipher of the World. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Articles and Reviews

• “Liberal Justice and Particular Identity: Cavell, Emerson, Rawls,” forthcoming in Arizona Quarterly.
  
• “Identity, Masochism, and the Democratic Intellectual in the War on Terror” forthcoming in The Hedgehog Review.
  
• Review: George Snedeker, The Politics of Critical Theory: Language/ Discourse/ Society in Socialism and Democracy 19(2005) 1.
  
• “Beyond Us and Them: Identity and Terror from an Arab-American’s Perspective,” in SAQ: Special Issue: Palestine America 102(Fall 2003) 4: 701-728.
  
• “Democracy, Aesthetics, Individualism: Emerson as Public Intellectual,” in Nineteenth-Century Prose: Special Issue: Ralph Waldo Emerson Bicentenary 30(Spring/Fall 2003) 195-226..
  
• “Intellectuals in a Time of Terror,” Politics and Culture: An International Review of Books 4: 2002 online (http://politcsandculture.neu.edu).
  
• “After 9/11: Intellectuals and the Clash of Cultures,” Socialism and Democracy 16 (Winter-Spring 2002) 1: 137-43.
  
• Review: Eduardo Cadava, Emerson and the Climates of History, in American Literature 72 (2000) 3: 630-31.
  
• Review: Richard Waswo, The Founding Legend of Western Civilization from Virgil to Vietnam, in Passages: Journal of Transnational and Transcultural Studies 1 (1999) 2: 302-304.
  
• “Science Friction and Cultural Studies: Intellectuals, Interdisciplinarity, and the Profession of Truth,” Camera Obscura 37 (January 1996) 125-56.
  
• “Making a Stand: Standpoint Epistemologies, Political Positions, Proposition 187,” Telos 108 (Summer 1996) 93-103.
  
• “Prosthetic Gender and Universal Intellect: Stephen Hawking’s Law,” in Boys: Versions of Contemporary Masculinity ed. Paul Smith (New York: Westview Press, 1996).
  
• Review: Richard E. Brantley, Coordinates for Anglo-American Romanticism: Wesley, Edwards, Carlyle and Emerson, in Studies in Romanticism 35 (1996) 3: 474-77.
  
• “The Revolt Against the Eggheads,” Rochester Review (Winter 1995-96) 14-15.
  
• “Critical Intellectuals and Identity Logic: Politics, Representation, and Community in the U. S.,” Telos 101 (Fall 1994) 117-136.
  
• “Tradition and the Critical Talent,” Telos 94 (Winter 1992-93) 45-68.
  
• Review: Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, in Modern Philology 91 (1993) 2: 260-67.
  
• “Thematics of Sexcess: Intellectuals, Popular Culture, and Hybris,” in Crossing Borders: American Literature and Other Artistic Media (Warsaw, Poland: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1992) 69-78.
  
• “The Intellectual in Uncivil Society: Michnik, Poland, and Community,” Telos 88 (Summer 1991) 141-154.
  
• “Fish Shticks: Rhetorical Questions in Doing What Comes Naturally,” diacritics 20 (Summer 1990) 54-74.
  
• Review: Representative Men: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4. edited by Douglas Emory Wilson, introduction and notes by Wallace E. Williams, in Resources for American Literary Study.
  
• “Vanguard and Critique,” Telos 83 (Spring 1990) 289-204.
  
• “Narration and Reflection: the Search for Grounds in Poe’s ‘The Power of Words’ and ‘The Domain of Arnheim,’” Arizona Quarterly 45 (Autumn 1989) 3: 1-22.
  
• “History and Romance, Sympathy and Uncertainty: the Moral of the Stones in Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun,” PMLA 103 (March 1988) 150-161.
  
• Review: Donald Pease, Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context, in Genre 20 (Spring 1987).
  
• Review: Ernst Mandel, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story, MLN 102 (December 1987).
  
• Review: Evan Carton, The Rhetoric of American Romance: Dialectic and Identity in Emerson, Dickinson, Poe, and Hawthorne, in Genre 20 (Spring 1987).
  
• “Emerson’s Chagrin: Benediction and Exhortation in Nature and ‘Tintern Abbey,’” MLN 101 (December 1986) 5: 1067-1085.
  
• Review: Julie Ellison, Emerson’s Romantic Style, in Genre 18 (Fall 1985).
  
• Review: Michael Colacurcio, The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne’s Early Tales, in MLN 100 (December 1985).
  
• Review: Carolyn Porter, Seeing and Being Seen: The Plight of the Participant Observer in Emerson, James, Adams, and Faulkner, in MLN 97 (December 1982).
  
• Review: Michel Beaujour, Miroirs d’encre: rhetorique de l’autoportrait, in MLN 96 (December 1981).
  

WORK UNDER CONSIDERATION OR IN PROGRESS

• Articles (solicited or submitted): “Identity, Masochism, and the Democratic Intellectual in the War on Terror” (submitted); “Death Love and Emerson’s Poetry” (submitted); “Douglass in Haiti, or the Failures of American Men” (submitted);
  
• Book MS in Progress: “Modern Poetry in Nineteenth-Century America: Poe, Whitman, Dickinson and Death.”

SELECTED LECTURES AND TALKS

• “Cartoon Crises, The Clash of Universalisms, and the Failure of Ethics in Moslem Europe,” MLA 2006.
  
• “20/20 Hindsight: Iraq after Three Years,” Amnesty International Talk and Roundtable, Rochester, 2006.
  
• ”Douglass in Haiti, or the Failures of American Men,” International Conference on Melville and Douglass, New Bedford, 2005.
  
• “Global Identity and American Ethnicities: The Case of the Arab American,” Duke University, 2003.
  
• “Frederick Douglass: Public Images, Private Life,” Frederick Douglass Conference, Howard University, 2003.
  
• “Douglass, Melville, and Identity, a response,” Frederick Douglass Conference, University of Rochester, 2003.
  
• “Identity, Terror, and Dissent,” Friends of the Rochester Public Library, 2003.
  
• “Jefferson’s Headaches: Race and Obsession in Notes on the State of Virginia and in American Culture Today,” Works in Progress Seminar, The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester, 2002.
  
• “Intellectuals in a Time of Terror,” Lehigh University, Spring 2002.
  
• “Nature and Obsession in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,” MLA Conference, New Orleans, 2001.
  
• “After 9/11: Intellectuals and the Clash of Cultures,” Roundtable on Globalization, University of Rochester, 2001.
  
• “Frederick Douglass and the Obsession of Self-Inscription,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, New Orleans, 2000.
  
• “Ahab’s Crew: Narrative, Obsession, and the American Character,” Narrative: an International Conference, Atlanta, 2000.
  
• “Young Americans: Herman Melville and American Popular Culture,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Coral Gables, 1999.
  
• “Jefferson’s Melancholy Science: Indices of Loss in Notes on the State of Virginia,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Newport, 1998.
  
• “Frederick Douglass and ‘Our Composite Nationality,’” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Pittsburgh, 1996.
  
• “Recent Biographies of Whitman and Emerson,” Bookshelf National Public Radio, WXXI, Rochester, N. Y. February 9, 1996.
  
• “Hume and the Common Sense: Politics, Aesthetics, Community,” MLA Conference, Chicago, 1995.
  
• “Forget Cooper: Race and Nation in Last of the Mohicans,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Dallas, 1995.
  
• “Universal Intellect and Prosthetic Gender: Hawking’s Law,” Critical Colloquium Series, University of Rochester, 1995.
  
• “Intellectual Work, Critical Resistance, and Cultural Studies,” Marxist Literary Group Conference, Pittsburgh, 1995.
  
• “Lydia Maria Child and the Management of the American Male,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies Conference, Rochester, 1994.
  
• “Neo-Colonialism, Race, and Culture,” NEMLA, Pittsburgh, 1994.
  
• “Imaging the Universal Intellectual: Stephen Hawking in Errol Morris’s A Brief History of Time, Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Syracuse, 1994.
  
• “Historicizing the Text: Crevecoeur, Iconography, and Dissent,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies Conference, Norman, 1993.
  
• “Crevecoeur and the Contexts of U. S. National Identity,” Semiotic Society of America Conference, St. Louis, 1993.
  
• “The New Neo-Colonialism and the Critical Importance of Cultural Studies,” Critical Colloquium Series, University of Rochester, 1993.
  
• “Theory as a Political Force,” Salzburg Seminar on Literature as Political Force, Salzburg, Austria, 1993.
  
• “Gender, Race, and National Identity in Contemporary U. S. Cinema,” Marxist Literary Group Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993.
  
• “The Popular Sublime: Grand Canyon and Thelma and Louise,” NEMLA, Philadelphia, 1993.
  
• “Modernity and Politics: The Literary Intellectual in Eastern Europe,” SUNY Geneseo, 1992.
  
• “Multiculturalism and the American Subject,” International Conference on Persons, Passions, and Pleasures, Berkeley, 1992.
  
• “Vortex, History, and the Essay: A Reply to Christine von Beulow,” Walter Benjamin, Crossing Borders Colloquium, Miami University, 1992.
  
• “Intellectuals and Uncivil Society,” Faculty Colloquium Series, University of Rochester, 1991.
  
• “Crossed Borders: Multiculturalism, Intellectuals, and Hybris,” International Conference on Boundaries and Borders, University of Silisia, Cieszyn, Poland, 1991.
  
• “Puritans and Prostitutes: Thematics of Sexcess in Contemporary American Movies,” Conference on American Literature and Other Media,” University of Lodz, Poland, 1991.
  
• “Writing Off the Margins of American Identity: Maxine Hong Kingston,” Conference on American Writing From the Margins, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, 1991.
  
• “Why We Can’t Think Straight: Devolution in Critical Theory,” Seminar on the Theory of Culture, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Poland, 1991.
  
• “American I. D.: Political Correctness, Repression, and Identity,” English Institute, University of Silesia, Poland, 1991.
  
• “History, Institution, Polemic in Contemporary American Theory,” Institute of Polish Philology, University of Silesia, Poland, 1991.
  
• “The Postmodern Situation in American Criticism,” English Institute, University of Warsaw, Poland, 1991.
  
• “Politics After Marx: History After Structuralism and the Current Situation in Poland,” UCLA Paris Program in Critical Theory, Paris, France, 1990.
  
• “Winning Discourse: Thinking Communities in the New Pragmatism,” Colloquium on Critical Theory, University of Rochester, 1989.
  
• “Freud’s Science,” Humanities Lecture Series, SUNY Geneseo, 1989.
  
• “Reflection and Alterity: Skepticism and Moral Thought in Poe’s Mixed Doubles,” MLA, 1988.
  
• “Paul and the Problem of Anti-Semitism,” Humanities Lecture Series, SUNY Geneseo, 1988.
  
• “Outside In: The Problem of Voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” African-American Literature Colloquium, SUNY Geneseo, 1988.
  
• “Anti-theory and the Political Consequences of Pragmatism,” Colloquium on Critical Theory, University of Rochester, 1988.
  
• “James Fenimore Cooper’s Historical Sublime,” University of Rochester, 1987.
  
• “Exegesis and Self-Identity: Emerson Among the Unitarians,” NEMLA, 1987.
  
• “Upstate New York and the American Sublime,” Annual Meeting Plenary Address, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1986.
  
• “James Fenimore Cooper and the American Sublime,” English Department Colloquium Series, SUNY Geneseo, 1986.
  
• “Feminism and Romance: Social and Literary Conventions in Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance,” NEMLA, 1986.
  
• “History and Sympathy in Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun,” SUNY Albany, 1986.
  
• “The Other’s Roman Face: The Aspect of the City in Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun,” MLA, 1985.
  
• “Death and Friendship: Charles Emerson and the Other Self in Nature,” Reed College, 1985.

PRESENTATIONS AND APPEARANCES

• Chair, “Obsessional Narratives, Narratives of Obsession: Cross Cultural Perspectives,” Narrative, an International Conference, Atlanta, 2000.
  
• Chair, “Mourning in America: Loss, Rejection, and the Idea of a New World Nation,” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 1998.
  
• Fellow, Salzburg Seminar, Literature as Political Force, Salzburg, Austria, 1993.
  
• Respondent, Walter Benjamin, International Conference on Critical Theory, SUNY Buffalo, 1990.
  
• Moderator and Discussant, “Undergraduate Education in a Research University,” Rochester Weekend, University of Rochester, 1990.
  
• Chair, “Re-Forming the New England Transcendentalists,” NEMLA, 1989.
  
• Speaker and Discussant, “Writing and Thinking: Writing at the Graduate Level,” Workshop on Writing in the Humanities, The University of Rochester, 1989.
  
• Seminar Leader, “Disciplining Foucault,” Faculty Seminar in Philosophy and Theory, SUNY Geneseo, 1987.
  
• Invited Participant, Institutions of Academia Conference, The Johns Hopkins University, 1986.
  
• Seminar Leader, “The American Landscape and American Literature,” The New
  York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1986

HONORS AND AWARDS

• Presidential Fellow, Salzburg Seminars, Salzburg, Austria, 1993.
  
• Fulbright Lecturing Award, Instytut Anglistyki, Uniwersytet warszawski, Poland, 1990-91.
  
• CIES Fellowship, Summer Polish Institute, University of Pittsburgh, 1990.
  
• Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, University of Rochester, 1989.
  
• William B. Kenan Teaching Fellowship for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching, The Johns Hopkins University, 1981-82, 1982-83.
  
• Humanities Center Fellowship for Study in Paris, The Johns Hopkins University, 1980-81.
  
• Human Biology Fellowship, The Johns Hopkins University, 1979-80.
  
• Graduate Fellowship, The Johns Hopkins University, 1977-79.
  

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY

• Advisory Board, Journal of Narrative Theory, 2000-
  
• Editorial Board, Telos, 1990-98.
  
• Member, Steering Committee, Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies Conference, Rochester, 1994.
  
• Tenure and Promotion Referee for (most recently) Princeton University, University of Michigan, Georgia Technological Institute, New York University.
  
• Outside Reader, Westview Press, University of Minnesota Press, Harper Collins, University of Chicago Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, University of Oklahoma Press, PMLA.
  
• Consultant and Interviewer, Fulbright Poland-America Scholar Exchange Program, Warsaw, Poland, 1990.
  
• Reviewer, NEH Grant Application to support reprinting of George Ripley’s Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, ed. Walter Harding, 1989.
  
• Faculty Mentor, McNair Program, 2006.
  
• Faculty Mentor, NEH Younger Scholars Program at the University of Rochester, 1988-89, 1989-90.
  
• Secretary and Chair, The New England Transcendentalist Panel, NEMLA, 1987-1989.
  
• Consultant with Walter Harding for the NEH Summer Seminars, 1985-1987.
  
• Member, Steering Committee, The Northeast Central Renaissance Conference at SUNY Geneseo, 1986.
  
• Assistant Editor, Glyph Textual Studies, 1979-1981.
  

DEPARTMENTAL AND UNIVERSITY SERVICE

• Member, Steering Committee for the UR Program in Literary Translation, 2006-2007.
  
• Visual and Cultural Studies Core Faculty, 2004-
  
• Member Executive Committee, The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, 2000-.
  
• Associate, Susan B. Anthony Women’s Studies Center, 1989-
  
• Freshman Advisor, 1994-
  
• Graduate Admissions Committee, English, (latest) 2004-2005.
  
• Graduate Admissions, Visual and Cultural Studies, (latest) 2004-2005.
  
• Co-Chair, The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, 2003-2004.
  
• Curriculum Director, The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, 2000-2003.
  
• Member, Advisory Committee for Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, 2002-2003.
  
• Interim Director, The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, 1999-2000.
  
• Member, Dean’s Advisory Committee on African and African-American Studies, 1998-99.
  
• Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, 1997-2001.
  
• Director of Graduate Studies, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies, 1998-99.
  
• Member, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies, Curriculum Committee, 1996-2001.
  
• Director of Undergraduate Studies, English Department, 1989-96.
  
• Member, College Writing Committee, 1992-1999.
  
• Member, Sproull Fellowship Committee, 1996.
  
• Member, Graduate Admissions Committee, English Department, 1995-96.
  
• Member, Film Studies Steering Committee, 1993-94.
  
• Member, Susan B. Anthony Women’s Studies Center Research Committee, 1993-94.
  
• Member, Susan B. Anthony Women’s Studies Center Steering Committee, 1991-93.
  
• Member, Search Committee, Susan B. Anthony Chair in Women’s Studies, 1991-92, 1992-93.
  
• Chair, Susan B. Anthony Women’s Studies Center Post-Doctoral Fellowship Committee, 1991-93.
  
• Member, Faculty Council Steering Committee, 1991-92.
  
• Representative, Faculty Council, 1991-93.
  
• Member, Comparative Arts Steering Committee, 1992.
  
• Member, Graduate Studies Committee, English Department, 1991-92.
  
• Member, Staffing Committee, English Department.
  
• Member, Committee on Committees, English Department, 1991-94.
  
• Member, Janet Kafka Fiction Prize Committee, 1989-90.
  
• Member, Commission on Enrollment, College of Arts and Science, 1990.
  
• Graduate Placement Officer, English Department, 1988-89.
  
• Member, Ad Hoc Committee on the Graduate Curriculum, English Department, 1988-89.
  
• Member, Scheduling Committee, English Department, 1988-1997, 1998-2001.
  
• Coordinator, American Civilization Program, SUNY Geneseo, 1986-1988.
  
• Member, College Senate, SUNY Geneseo, 1985-88.
  
• Member, Graduate Academic Affairs Committee, SUNY Geneseo, 1987-88.
  
• Member, Faculty Affairs Committee, SUNY Geneseo, 1985-87.
  
• Member, Fine Arts Core Committee, SUNY Geneseo, 1985-87.
  
• Member, Policy Committee, English Department, SUNY Geneseo, 1984-85.
  
• Coordinator, English Faculty Colloquium Series, SUNY Geneseo, 1984-85.
  
• Coordinator, Honors Program in Humanistic Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 1981-83.
  

TEACHING

• Positions:
  Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, English Department, University of Rochester, 1988-
  Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, 2004-
  Professor Ndzwyczajny, Instytut Anglistyki, Uniwersytet warszawski, Poland, 1990-91.
  Assistant Professor, English Department, SUNY Geneseo, 1984-1988.
  Teaching Assistant, The Humanities Center and The English Department, The Johns Hopkins University, 1978-1984.
  
  
• Courses Taught at the University of Rochester:
  Undergraduate Courses: Black Intellectuals, Great Books; Race and Representation in American Culture; Whitman and Melville; National Identity and Cultural Forms; American Literature; American Romantics; American Realists; The Whitman Tradition in American Poetry; Narrative; Classical and Scriptural Backgrounds to English Literature; Utopian Imagination; Fictions and Reality; Sex and Violence in the Cinema; The Sixties on Film.
  
  
• Graduate Seminars: Aesthetics and Ethics; Henry James; Cosmopolitanism and American Literature; Aesthetics and Power; Hawthorne and the Theory of American Literature; Literary Criticism and the Public Sphere; National Identity and American Romance; Intellectuals and the Public Sphere; American Romantics; Theory, Pragmatism, and Politics; Antebellum American Culture and Crisis; Intellectual Enlightenment and Power.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

• Modern Language Association
  
• American Studies Association
  
• Marxist Literary Group
  
• Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies
  
• Society for Cinema Studies