Prof Nick Selby
| Job Title | Contact | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Professor of American Literature |
N dot Selby at uea dot ac dot uk
Tel: 3417/3564 |
Arts Building 1.23 |
Biography
Nick Selby is Professor of American Literature in, and Head of, the School of American Studies. He came to UEA in 2007 have taught previously at Swansea University and Glasgow University. He has a wide range of research interests, with poetry of the twentieth century at the core of his research. As well as focusing on American experimental poetry, avant-gardism and the issue of what constitutes an American poetics, his current interests also include transatlantic connections in British experimental poetry, ecocriticism, and theories of the ethics and politics of close-reading. Nick’s most recent book, Poetics of Loss in The Cantos of Ezra Pound was published in 2005. He has published three other books, on Herman Melville, T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman, as well as numerous essays on topics concerned with American literature and culture.
Nick is happy to consider dissertation proposals in his main research areas.
Nick is Editor of the journal Comparative American Studies and is happy to receive submissions for consideration in this journal. For submission details click here
Key Research Interests
American poetry of the twentieth century is at the core of Professor Selby's research. As well as focusing on American experimental poetry, avant-gardism and the issue of what constitutes an American poetics, his current interests also include transatlantic connections in British experimental poetry, and theories of the ethics and politics of close-reading.
Forthcoming publications:
‘Ecopoetries in America’ in Jennifer Ashton, ed., The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Post-1945 (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), in press
Past Research Projects and Grants
| Project Title | Start Date | End Date | Funding Body |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Studies Lecture Series 2007 | 26/9/2007 | 26/6/2008 | Embassy of the United States of America |
Article
Selby, Nick (2011) 'Transatlantic Influence'. Negotiations: A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 1. ISSN 2231-1378
Selby, Nick (2006) Open Ground: American Mythologies and Jorie Graham's "Pollock and Canvas". Word and Image, 22 (2). pp. 128-45.
Selby, Nick (2005) "Created Space"' Mapping America as poem in Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End and Susan Howe's Secret History of the Dividing Line. Journal of American Studies, 39 (1). pp. 41-64.
Selby, Nick (2004) Desiring Texts: the erotics of domestic space in the poetry of Lyn Hejinian and Rosmarie Waldrop. European Journal of American Literature , 23 (1). pp. 21-29. ISSN 14660407
Selby, Nick (2000) 'A Columbus of the Imagination': America, the millennium, and the poetry of Jorie Graham. European Journal of American Culture, 19 (2). pp. 96-115. ISSN 144660407
Selby, Nick (1997) Poem as Work-Place: Gary Snyder's Ecological Poetics. Sycamore: A Journal of American Culture, 1 (4). pp. 1-19.
Selby, Nick (1996) Teaching Whitman's 'Song of Myself': Radical Poetics in the Classroom. Readerly/Writerly Texts: Essays on Literature, Literary/Textual Criticism, and Pedagogy, 4 (1). pp. 63-83. ISSN 10663630
Selby, Nick (1996) Allen Ginsberg's Howl: Sexuality and Popular Heroism in 50s America. Revue Francaise d'etudes Americaines. pp. 62-70. ISSN 03977870
Selby, Nick (1995) Fascist Language in The Adams Cantos of Ezra Pound. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 2. pp. 61-72. ISSN 13006606
Selby, Nick (0201) Reading England: pastoral, elegy and the politics of place in Ric Caddel and Harriet Tarlo. Textual Practice, 25 (5). ISSN 0950-236X
Book Section
Selby, Nick (2011) Ecopoetries in America. In: The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Post-1945. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (In Press)
Selby, Nick (2010) Memory Pieces: collage, memorial and the poetics of intimacy in Joe Brainard, Jasper Johns and Frank O'Hara. In: Frank O'Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet. Liverpool University Press , pp. 229-246. ISBN 9781846312335
Selby, Nick (2008) "The poem on this page is as massive as Anne's thighs": Textual Promiscuity in Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets. In: The Body and the Book.: Writings on Poetry and Sexuality. Editions Rodopi B.V. ISBN 9789042024229
Selby, Nick (2007) Transatlantic Poetics in H.M.S Little Fox and Boston - Brighton. In: The Salt Companion to the Works of Lee Harwood. Salt, Cambridge, pp. 85-103. ISBN 1844710775
Selby, Nick (2007) push.../ thing.../ other.../ work...: Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams and the poem as a machine made of words. In: The Legacy of William Carlos Williams: Points of Contact. Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, pp. 134-152. ISBN 1847181945
Selby, Nick (2006) "A Generous Time": Lee Harwood in New York. In: Don't Ever Get Famous: Essays on New York Writing Beyond the 'New York School'. Dalkey Archive Press, pp. 215-241. ISBN 1564784606
Selby, Nick (2005) Mythologies of 'Ecstatic Immersion': America, The Poem, and the Ethics of Lyric in Jorie Graham and Lisa Jarnot. In: American Mythologies: New Essays on Contemporary Literature. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, pp. 202-225. ISBN 0853237360/ 0853237468
Selby, Nick (2004) The Trials of Manhood: Censorship, The Body and the City Lights Pocket Poet Series. In: City Lights; Pocket Poets and Pocket Books. Ila Palma, Rome, pp. 71-90. ISBN 8877045396
Selby, Nick (2004) Prometheans Unbound: touching books in Jorie Graham's Swarm and Susan Howe's 'Scattering as Behaviour Towards Risk'. In: Rebound: The American Poetry Book. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, pp. 183-196. ISBN 9042017120
Selby, Nick (2003) Embodied Music: Robert Creeley, Hilda Morley and a Sense of Measure. In: Sound as Sense: Contemporary U.S Poetry &/ in Music. Peter Lang, Brussels, pp. 107-119. ISBN 905201194X/ 0820466107
Selby, Nick (2000) Cultural Mapping: Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End as American Epic. In: Postwar American Poetry: The Mechanics of the Mirage. University of Liege Press , Liege, pp. 187-195. ISBN 2872330259
Selby, Nick (2000) Coming back to oneself/ coming back to the land: Gary Snyder's Poetics. In: Reading Under the Sign of Nature: New Essays in Ecocriticism. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 179-197. ISBN 0874806488
Selby, Nick (1998) Memory, Forgetting and American Poetics in Ezra Pound's The Pisan Cantos'. In: Memory, History and Critique. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 120-140. ISBN 9073022118 CD Rom
Selby, Nick (1997) 'Queer shoulders to the Wheel': Whitman, Ginsberg and a Bisexual Poetics. In: The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire. Cassell, London, pp. 120-140. ISBN 0304337447/ 0304337455
Selby, Nick (1992) Revolutionary Figures in Canto XXXI. In: Ezra Pound and America. Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 114-131. ISBN 0333558057
Book
Selby, Nick (2005) Poetics of Loss in the Cantos of Ezra Pound: From Modernism to Fascism (Studies in British Literature). Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, p. 271. ISBN 0773460551
Selby, Nick (2003) The Poetry of Walt Whitman: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York. ISBN 1403933162/ 18046240X
Selby, Nick (2000) The Columbia Critical Guide to the Wasteland. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0231124244/ 0231124252
Selby, Nick (1999) The Icon Critical Guide to T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land. Icon Books, Cambridge. ISBN 1840460393
Selby, Nick (1999) The Columbia Critical Guide to Herman Melville: Moby-Dick. Columbia University Press, New York . ISBN 0231115385/ 0231115393
Selby, Nick (1998) The Icon Critical Guide to Moby-Dick. Icon Books, Cambridge. ISBN 1874166757
External Activities and Indicators of Esteem
- Editor, Comparative American Studies, 2008-
- Editorial Board, Negotiations: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies
- Editorial Board, Journal of American Studies, 1998-2005
- Elected to the Committee on Programs and Departments of the American Studies Association, 2011-2014
- Treasurer, British Association for American Studies, 2000-2005
- Officer and Executive Committee, British Association for American Studies, 1998-2005
- Treasurer, Scottish Association for the Study of America, 2002-2007
- External Examiner, University of Manchester, undergraduate programmes in American Studies, 2011-2014
- External Examiner, University of Birmingham, undergraduate programmes in American Studies, 2011-2014
- External Examiner, University College, Dublin, MA in American Literature, 2009-2012
- External Examiner, University of Kent’s undergraduate American Studies programmes, 2008-2011
