MARA SCANLON
Professor of English
University of Mary Washington
Education
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 1998
Dissertation: “Novelty in Verse: Bakhtin and the Multivocal Epics of Pound, H. D., and Walcott”
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992
B.A. with High Honors, University of Virginia, 1991
Teaching and Research Interests
twentieth-century literature, especially Modernism; poetry (epic, lyric, long poem) and poetics; ethics and literature; women’s literature and gender theory; periodical studies; Bakhtinian theory; Asian American literature; genre studies; literature of the First World War; digital humanities
Selected Honors, Grants, and Awards
Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, University of Mary Washington, 2014
National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Humanities Grants: “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman,” 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. Lead grant writer: Matthew Gold, New York City College of Technology.
- Faculty Research Grant, 2016-2017: “Telegraphy, Morse Code, and H.D.’s Technopoetics”
- Sabbatical award, “Digital Modernism: The Artifact, The Poetess, and The Modernist Journals Project,” Spring 2014
- Sabbatical award, “Dialogism and Poetry—an edited volume,” Spring 2007
- Faculty Research Grant, 2012-2013: “Gender Identity and Promiscuous Identification in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier”
- Faculty Development Professional Activity Grant, 2007-2008: “Considering Confinement in Pinion and Poetic Sequence.”
- Faculty Development Professional Activity Grant, 2001-2002: “Ethics and/in/of Literature: Answerability and the Dialogic Lyric.”
- AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship, 1997-1998
- University of Wisconsin Dissertation Fellowship, 1997
- Phi Beta Kappa, 1991
Publications
Book
Poetry and Dialogism: Hearing Over. Author of “Introduction: Hearing Over.” Co-Editor with Chad Engbers (Calvin College). Palgrave Macmillan 2014.
Essays and Interviews
“Gender Identity and Promiscuous Identification: Reading (in) Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier.” The Journal of Modern Literature 40.3 (2017): 66-83.
“’Afoot with my Vision’: Whitmania and Tourism in the Digital Age.” From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors. Eds. Jennifer Harris and Hilary Iris Lowe. U of Massachusetts P, 2017. 107-124.
“Companions of the Flame: Teaching H.D. with Other Modern Poets.” Approaches to Teaching H.D.’s Poetry and Prose, MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Eds. Annette Debo and Lara Vetter. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2011.
Interview with Claudia Emerson, 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner in Poetry. The Writer’s Chronicle 43.1 (September 2010).
“Ethics and the Lyric: Form, Dialogue, Answerability.” College Literature 34.1 (Winter 2007).
“The Case of Onoto Watanna’s A Japanese Nightingale: Orientalism, Tricksterism, and Other Complications of a Chinese-American Novel.” The Voice of Han 2 (2006).
“Assessing New Texts for the Asian American Literature Classroom: Gender and Culture in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats and Kathleen Tyau’s Makai.” The Virginia Review of Asian Studies vol. IV (Fall 2002).
“Mother Land, Mother Tongue: Reconfiguring Relationship in Suleri’s Meatless Days.” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 12.4 (2001).
“‘In the Mouths of the Tribe’: Omeros and the Heteroglossic Nation.” Bucknell Review XLIII.2 (Winter 2000). Special journal issue Bakhtin and the Nation. Eds. San Diego Bakhtin Circle.
“Sook Nyul Choi.” Critical bio-bibliography. Asian American Novelists. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Greenwood Press, 2000.
“The Divine Body in Grace Nichols’s The Fat Black Woman’s Poems.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma. 72.1 (Winter 1998).
Book Reviews
Green Modernism: Nature and the English Novel, 1900-1930, by Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 60.2 (2017)
Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception, eds. John Attridge and Rod Rosenquist. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 58.1 (2015).
The Cambridge Companion to H.D., eds. Nephie Christodoulides and Polina Mackay. Women’s Studies: An International Journal 43.1 (2014).
Recent Conference Participation and Invited Presentations
“Mary Borden’s ‘Moonlight’: ‘A Crazy Hurting Dream.'” Seminar on World War I: Reconsidering Rupture. 17th Modernist Studies Association Conference: Modernism & Revolution, Boston, MA, forthcoming 19-22 November, 2015.
“H.D., Charlotte Mew, and the Magdalen: ‘what she did, everyone knows.’” H.D. and Feminist Poetics Conference. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA,17-20 September 2015.
“‘I Just Have a Lot of Feeling’: Reflections on the Modernist Poetess.” Seminar on The Feeling(s) of Modernism. 16th Modernist Studies Association Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, 6-9 November, 2014.
“’Dot tick, we are here’: H.D. on Art, Vision, and Codebreaking.” H.D. International Society Panel. 84th Annual South Atlantic Modern Language Convention, Research Triangle, NC, 9-11 November, 2012.
“’Afoot with my vision’: Presence, Accessibility, and Tourism in the Digital Age.” 42nd Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, New Brunswick, NJ, 7-10 April 2011.
“Gender Identity and Promiscuous Identification: Reading the Romance of West’s The Return of the Soldier.” Invited Speaker: 2011 Washington Area Modernist Symposium, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 5 March 5 2011.
“Walt Whitman.” Invited Speaker: The 2011 Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, University of Mary Washingon, Fredericksburg, VA, 15 February 2011.
“Looking for Whitman: A Cross-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy.” 2009 Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, 27-30 December 2009.
“We Dwell in Possibility—Technology, Community, and Answerability in the Literature Classroom.” Co-presented with James Groom. 2009 Virginia Humanities Conference: Humanities on Display, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 3-4 April 2009.
“The ‘incinerating eye’ and I in Suji Kwock Kim’s Notes from the Divided Country.” Conference on the Poetics of Conflict and Reconciliation, Bridgewater, VA, 16-18 October 2008.
“Form Remembers: Lyrics Containing History.” Co-presented with Claudia Emerson. Lifting Belly High: Women’s Poetry Since 1900, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, 11-13 September 2008.
Panel Organizer/Chair. “’The Answering Word’: Poetry and Bakhtinian Theory.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Buffalo, NY, 10-13 April 2008.
“Two Women Writers and the Voyage In (Between): The Speaking Subject in H. D. and Louise Glück.” 9th Annual Modern Studies Association Conference, Long Beach, CA, 1-4 November 2007.
Professional Memberships
