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Joseph Csicsila
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| Associate Professor |
PhD, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1998
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612J Pray-Harrold Ypsilanti, MI 48197
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734.487.1369
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jcsicsila@emich.edu
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| Biography:
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Joseph Csicsila joined the Department of English at Eastern Michigan University as an assistant professor in 2000. He received a Bachelors Degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 1992, a Masters Degree from Auburn University in 1994, and Ph.D. in English from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1998. Professor Csicsila teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and literary criticism. In 2002, he was awarded the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, the highest honor Eastern Michigan University bestows upon its professoriate.
Csicsila's research focuses generally on American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His principal interests include Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, and William Faulkner. In addition, Csicsila studies the ways that American writers have been taught in our nation's universities throughout the 20th century and how these pedagogical trends have impacted each author's place in the American literary canon as it has evolved over time. This line of inquiry is the subject of his first book, Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies, published in 2004 by the University of Alabama Press.
Csicsila's research on the treatment of American writers in the college classroom also led to his development of a groundbreaking course for literature and teaching majors at Eastern Michigan University called "Mark Twain for Teachers." In June 2002, Csicsila traveled with twenty undergraduate and graduate students from Eastern Michigan to Quarry Farm, Mark Twain's home in Elmira, New York, where he taught an intensive summer class that dealt primarily with the handling Twain's best-known and oftentimes controversial writings in high school and college literature courses.
Professor Csicsila has delivered presentations around the country, including at the International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, the Modern Language Association national convention, the American Literature Association annual conference, and the College English Association annual meeting, to name a few. He has lectured at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Historical Society and the Center for Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, New York, where he was the Fall 1996 Scholar in Residence. Csicsila currently serves as Editor of the Journal of Narrative Theory and Review Editor of the Mark Twain Annual. |
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| Courses:
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| Mark Twain for Teachers |
| Graduate Studies in American Literature
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| Studies in the American Novel
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| American Women's Literature
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| African American Literature
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| Reading of Fiction
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Recent Publications: |
Canons by Consensus (University of Alabama Press, 2004)
Co-Editor, Prentice Hall Anthology of American Literature
Editor, The Gilded Age (Modern Library)
"Mark Twain as He Is Taught"
"Life's Rich Pageant: The Education of August Feldner in Mark Twain's No.44, The Mysterious Stranger"
"Religious Satire to Tragedy of Consciousness: Mark Twain's No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger"
"Louisa Ellis and the Unpardonable Sin: Alienation of Mary Wilkins Freeman's 'A New England Nun' "
"The Storm-Tossed heart of man: Echoes of 'Nausicaa' in The Sound and the Fury"
"An Old Southwesterner Abroad: Cultural Frontiers and J. Ross Brown"
" 'Isn't It the Supidest Thing You've Ever Heard?': Human Struggle in Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City"
"Numerological Structures in 'The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth' "
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