Dr Philip Coleman B.A. (NUI), M.A. (Dub), M.Phil. (Dub), Ph.D. (Dub)

Director, MPhil in Literatures of the Americas (2013-15)

Coordinator, School of English Evening Lecture Series (MT 2013)

Literary Arts Officer

Background

I first came to Trinity in 1995, having read for a BA in English and Philosophy in University College Cork. After completing an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature in TCD in 1996, I wrote a PhD thesis on the poetry of John Berryman, which I completed in 2001. My first academic appointments were in UCD as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2002) and in UCC as a Temporary Lecturer (2002-03). I was appointed to a Lectureship in English (Broad Curriculum) in Trinity in 2003. In 2006 I was appointed to a permanent lectureship in English Studies (Literature of the Americas), and in the academic year 2006-07 I was first Director of the MPhil in Literatures of the Americas program in Trinity.

In 2008 and 2012 I was Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and in 2009 I was Visiting Professor in the English Department at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. I have served on the editorial board of Metre magazine and I was executive editor of the official journal of the Irish Association for American Studies, IJASonline, for its first two issues (www.ijasonline.com). I have served on the Board of the Irish Association for American Studies and I am currently on the Board of the Irish Literature Exchange (www.ile.ie) and a member of the Committee for Literatures in English in the Royal Irish Academy (http://www.ria.ie/Our-Work/Committees/Committees-for-the-Humanities-and-Social-Sciences/Literatures-in-English.aspx). I am also a member of the Irish Fulbright Alumni Association.

Research

My research to date has focused mainly on US American poetry and short fiction, with a special focus on the work of John Berryman, about whom I have published several articles and co-edited an essay collection with Philip McGowan entitled ‘After thirty Falls’: New Essays on John Berryman (Rodopi, 2007). My book-length study of Berryman, entitled John Berryman’s Public Vision: re-locating ‘the scene of disorder’, is forthcoming from UCD Press. I have also published articles on several other US American poets, including Muriel Rukeyser, Carl Rakosi, and August Kleinzahler, as well as critical essays exploring the short fiction of William Austin, Edgar Allan Poe, George Saunders, Chuck Palahniuk, and David Foster Wallace. I have also published work on Chicana author Sandra Cisneros and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro.

I welcome the opportunity to supervise postgraduate research projects across the fields of modern and contemporary US American and Canadian poetry and fiction. Students have recently completed PhDs on David Foster Wallace, Delmore Schwartz, representations of animality in American poetry, and Ted Hughes’s engagements with American literature under my supervision. I am currently supervising projects on the short fiction of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, the poetics of e.e. cummings and Mina Loy, Asian-American poetry, and two dissertations on David Foster Wallace. I am also supervising a PhD on Roberto Bolaño as part of Trinity’s PhD in Digital Humanities programme. I have an active interest in modern and contemporary British and Irish poetries in English, so I would also welcome inquiries from students interested in doing doctoral research in these fields, especially in transatlantic contexts.

Among my other recent publications are: ‘Forever Young?’ The Changing Images of America, co-edited with Stephen Matterson (Universitätsverlag, 2012); From Findrum to Fisterra: Reading Pearse Hutchinson, co-edited with Maria Johnston (Irish Academic Press, 2011); ‘On Verse Letters’ in A Companion to Poetic Genre, ed. Erik Martiny (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Previous edited works include On Literature and Science: Essays, Reflections, Provocations (Four Courts, 2007), and I am also a reviewer of contemporary poetry for publications including The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Left Review, Southword, and The Edinburgh Review.I have essays forthcoming on a number of topics, including affinities between Irish and Hungarian poetry and the idea of madness in modernist poetry. Current research projects include essays on the poetry of Timothy Donnelly, W.B. Yeats’s use of stories, the idea of futurity in the work of American heavy rock band Mastodon, a co-authored book on the poetry and poetics of friendship, and a number of co-edited essay collections.

Teaching

I contribute lectures and seminars to a number of undergraduate and postgraduate modules offered by the School of English, and I also contribute a seminar on Dante and modern American poetry to the MPhils in Comparative Literature/Translation Studies. In 2013-14 I will offer a year-long Sophister option on American essays and a one-semester module focussing on the modernist journal BLAST. I coordinate the Senior Freshman module ‘Introduction to Modernism’ and I offer an option on New England writing to the students of the MPhil in Literatures of the Americas.

Contact

Dr Philip Coleman
Room 4020
Arts Building
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Telephone: +353-1-896 1907
e-mail: philip.coleman@tcd.ie

Links
RSS page: https://tcdlocalportal.tcd.ie/pls/webapps/cerif.cerif_cv.display_cv?p_cv_id=322