As a literary scholar, I share ideas with students and scholars in a conversation that helps to establish the shared values of our global community.

 

 

L. Michelle Baker

37 Thayers Gull Drive

Martinsburg, WV  25405

304 995 3745

lbaker@shepherd.edu

lmichellebaker@yahoo.com

 

Education

 

2008       Ph.D., The Catholic University of America

Dissertation:  Blaming Helen:  Beauty and Desire in Contemporary Literature

Treats classical and medieval aesthetic philosophy as a viable mode of critical theory by developing a postmodern attitude toward beauty, rooted in the anxiety between the material reality of an art object and its ideal significance, exemplified by the most ancient icon of beauty in the western world—Helen of Troy.  Novelist Christa Wolf, playwright Howard Barker, and poet Derek Walcott are studied alongside others developing similar themes, all of whom discover new attitudes toward the power of both the real and ideal forms of beauty.

                Comprehensive Focus—Post World War II British Literature

2002       M.A., English Language and Literature,

The Catholic University of America

Special Focus—The Novel

1998       B.A., English, Shepherd College (magna cum laude)

 

Publications

 

“Amis, Martin.  Money.” Masterplots.  3rd Revised Edition. Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press, 2011.  Print.

“Before Reproduction:  The Distortion of Generation.”  Philosophia:  The Quarterly Journal of Israel.  36.3 (September 2008):  299-312.  Online and Print.

“Buck, Pearl S.”  Encyclopedia of American Literature.  Eds. Judith Baughman, et al.  NY:  Facts on File, 2008.  Print.

“Byatt, A.S.  Possession.”  Masterplots.  3rd Revised Edition. Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press, 2011.  Print.

“Byatt, A.S.  The Virgin in the Garden.  Possession.  Angels & Insects.”  Magill’s Survey of World Literature.  Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press, 2009.  Print.

“Creative Shipwrecks:  Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Byron’s Don Juan.”  Romanticism on the Net.  45 (Feb 2007).  Online.

“Graves, Robert:  The White Goddess.”  The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to the present.  NY:  Facts on File, 2008.  Print.

“Guy Mannering.”  Cyclopedia of Literary Places.  Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press.  2003. Print.

“Jung and Myth Criticism.”  The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to the present.  NY:  Facts on File, 2008.  Print.

“The Miracle that Happens When Desire’s Dead.”  Modern Drama.  53.1 (Winter 2010).  Print.

“Ozick, Cynthia.  The Shawl.  Rosa.”  Student’s Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters.  Ed. Matthew J.  Bruccoli and Judith Baughman.  NY:  Facts on File, 2008.  Print.

“Queer Theory.”  Critical Survey of Poetry.  4th ed.  Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press, 2010.  Print.

“Steinbeck, John.  Cannery Row.  Doc.”  Student’s Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters.  Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith Baughman.  NY:  Facts on File, 2008.  Print.

“Walcott, Derek.  Omeros.”  Magill’s Survey of World Literature.  Pasadena, CA:  Salem Press, 2009.  Print.

 

Presentations

 

October 2008.  “The War Within.  Elizabeth Cook’s Achilles.”  The Poetics of Conflict and Reconciliation.  Conference on Christianity and Literature.  Bridgewater College.  Bridgewater, VA. 

November 2007.  “Erotic Nation:  ‘Helen of the West Indies’ and Walcott’s Desire for a Postmodern / Postcolonial Theory of Beauty.”  The Future of Postcolonial Literature and Theory.  SAMLA.  Atlanta, GA. 

March 2007.  “’The great, inescapable terror of her love’:  Responses to the Classical Past in Yannis Ritsos’ Monologues.” James Madison University.  Harrisburg, VA.

September 2005.  “Locating the Turn:  Conversion as an Objective Correlative in Eliot’s Ash Wednesday.”  26th Annual T. S. Eliot Society Conference.  St. Louis, MO.

April 2005.  “Creative Shipwrecks:  Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Byron’s Don Juan.”  Graduate Symposium.  George Washington University.  Washington, DC.

November 2001.  “Oral and Literate Traditions in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock.”  Mid-Atlantic ACIS Conference.  Penn State. Philadelphia, PA. 

February 1998.  “Machiavelli’s Influence on Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta.” 6th Annual Undergraduate Literary Symposium. West Virginia University. Morgantown, WV.

 

Teaching Experience

 

Shepherd University.  Shepherdstown, WV.  Adjunct Instructor.  2002 to 2010.

Survey of World Literature—Special Topic, Descents to the Underworld

(taught alone and in a learning community with The Graphic Novel)

Survey of World Literature—Enlightenment to Postmodern; and Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance

Writing in the Arts & Humanities; Written English I; and Introduction to the Liberal Arts

(taught alone and in learning communities with Introduction to Music, Research Methods and Information Retrieval, and Introduction to Psychology)

 

The Catholic University of America.  Washington, DC.  Teaching Assistant.  2000 to 2005. 

(With full responsibility):  Writing Improvement (upper level), Writing About Literature, Rhetoric and Composition; (As TA for another professor):  Rhetoric and Composition—Workshop Component; Junior Writing Seminar, Media Studies; Introduction to Media Studies

 

The National Conservation Training Center.  Shepherdstown, WV.  Member, Course Design and Instructor Team.  2007 to present.

Critical Writing / Critical Thinking—A one week, intensive course that demonstrates critical writing and thought processes to biologists, many with advanced degrees, working for the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of Interior.  Team teach with other instructors, analyze and develop curriculum, develop assessment measures, and train other reviewers in their implementation.  

 

Research Interests

 

•  Manuscript in progress:  Dying to Know:  Postmodern Permutations of Classical Underworld Paradigms. 

     Suggest that traditional spiritual and agricultural narratives about death no longer stimulate our imaginations and must be replaced with myths more relevant to an industrialized, global society. 

•  Develop a structural poetics of Walcott’s Omeros.

•  Continue studying the tension between material and ideal forms of beauty in postmodern writers including Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, and Terun Tejpal.

•  Explore the connection between novel writing and film production in late 20th c England.

•  Examine the uses of the catalog as a rhetorical device in postmodern literature.

 

Honors

 

2000       Doctoral Scholarship, The Catholic University of America

1998       1st Place, 6th Annual Undergraduate Literary Symposium, West Virginia University.  “Machiavelli’s Influence on Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta.”

1998       Honorable Mention, Coastal Carolina University Symposium on British Literature, “Roxana:  Psychological Realism Predefined.”

1997       Inducted into Sigma Tau Delta (ΣΤΔ)—The English Honor Sorority

 

Memberships

 

2005       T. S. Eliot Society

2000       Modern Language Association (MLA)

                20th Century English Literature

                Classical Studies and Modern Literature

                English Literature Other than British and American

                Part-Time Faculty Members

                Philosophical Approaches to Literature

                Postcolonial Studies in Literature and Culture

                Prose Fiction      

2000       Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW)