About
I am a professor at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, where I teach twentieth-century poetry, literary theory, and postcolonial literature. I was born and raised in Seattle and have lived and taught in Guatemala, Samoa, Asia, and Europe.
My publications include:
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Mastery's
End: Travel and Postwar American Poetry. University of
Georgia Press 2005. |
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The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry. Editor. Five Volumes. Greenwood Press, 2006. |
I also study Caribbean literature and was a participant in
the 1997 NEH Summer Institute "Performance and Text in Caribbean Literature
and Art," in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I have invited numerous Caribbean
writers to Seton Hall, including Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Derek Walcott,
Kamau Brathwaite, and Maryse Conde. In 2000, I was a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala, where I taught a graduate
course at the University of San Carlos in Latin American - North American
literary exchanges and lectured at the Universidad Rafael Landivar.. In
Spring, 2006 I was Fulbright Faculty Fellow in Nanjing, China. I also
lectured at universities in Wuhan, Chongqing, and Hunan. Ph.D. University of California, Riverside, 1994 To Top My principal teaching interests are American poetry, postcolonial literature and literary theory:
Some sample syllabi (saved as .pdf): Books: Mastery's End: Travel and Postwar
American Poetry. University of Georgia Press. 2005. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry. Editor. Five
Volumes. Greenwood, 2006. Articles: "Precocious Testimony: Poetry and the Uncommemorable."
Literature After 9/11. Ed. Ann Keniston and Jeanne
Follansbee Quinn. New York: Routledge 2008.
Forthcoming. Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright." The American
Dream: Bloom's Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York:
Chelsea House, 2008. Forthcoming.
Jorge Luis Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths." The
Labyrinth: Bloom's Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom.
"Fear of Flying: Robert Lowell and Travel." Papers
on Language and Literature 41.1 (Winter 2005): 26-54. "Derek Walcott's Traveler and the Problem of
Witness." Callaloo 28.4 (Winter 2005). "MacSong: Karaoke and the Academy." Prospects: An
Annual of American Cultural Studies 28 (2004):
627-638. "Literature, Difference, and the Land of Witness." Profession.
Modern Language Association : New York. 2002 "In the Name of the Subject: Some Recent Versions of the Personal."
Personal Effects. Ed. Deborah Holdstein and David Bleich.
Utah State UP: Logan, UT,
2001. "’Beyond the Letter’: Identity, Song, and Strick." Callaloo
23.2 (Spring 2000). "Memory and Imagination in Day by Day." The Critical Response
to Robert Lowell. Ed. Steven Gould Axelrod.
Greenwood, 1999. "Richard Hugo," "Muriel Rukeyser," and
"Charles Reznikoff": three biographical essays
for American National Biography. Ed. John A. Garraty. Oxford University
Press. 1998 "George Norman Douglas." British Travel Writers 1876-1909. Ed.
Barbara Brothers and Julia M.
Gergits. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research.1998. "Una Sesion Musical con Carli Munoz," El Nuevo Dia 19 July
1997. (San Juan, Puerto Rico). "'It's Not Natural': Freud's 'Uncanny' and O'Connor's Wise Blood." Southern
Literary Journal 24.1(1996): 56-68. "John Ashbery's 'The Instruction Manual.'" The Explicator 54
(1996): 117-120. "Elizabeth Bishop's 'Brazil, January 1, 1502.'" The Explicator
54 (1995):36-39. "Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella
Larsen's Quicksand." Novel 27.3
(Spring 1994): 257-270. "'Necessary Thought': Frank Bidart and the Post-Confessional." Contemporary
Literature 34.4 (Winter 1993): 714-739. Poetry: "A Tunisian Story," 1995/1996 Anthology of Magazine Verse and
Yearbook of American Poetry. Ed. Alan F. Pater. Palm Springs: "Among the Amak," "Ancient Love," and "A Tunisian
Story," American Poetry Review 24.4 (July/August 1995): 17. To Top "Frank Bidart and the West." European
Association of American Studies. Oslo, Norway. May 11, 2008. "Beat Identities and Travel" (Respondent),
American Studies Association. Oakland, California. October 12, 2006 "Travel as Critique in U.S. Postwar Poetry: Ginsberg's
'Childish Geography,'" Modern
Language Association, Washington, D.C. December 28, 2005. "A 'Preference
for Difference': Travel and Translation in Lyn Hejinian's Oxota: A Short Russian
Novel." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Malibu, CA.
November 23, 2005 "Bishop and Brazil." American Literature Association. San Francisco, CA. May
30, 2004. "Questions of Ethnography: Elizabeth Bishop's Tristes
Tropiques." American
"The Work of Mourning: Philip Larkin and the Elegiac." College
English Association, Caribbean Chapter. University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.
October 17-18 2003 "Encuentros en la Memoria: Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia
Marquez." Universidad Rafael Landivar. Guatemala City, Guatemala. April 6, 2000. "Out of History: Universalism and Derek Walcott's The Bounty."
Session: "The Virtues of Cosmopolitanism." Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, December
27, 1999. "Caribbeanness, Creolite, and the Position of Derek
Walcott." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. Portland, OR, November 5, 1999. Music and Nathaniel Mackey's Strick: Song of the
Andoumboulou.
Pacific Ancient and Modern Language
Association. Scripps College, Claremont, CA. November 7, 1998. "Memory and Imagination in Day by Day. " Northeast Modern Language
Association. Baltimore, Maryland. April 18, 1998. "Derek Walcott, Universals, and The Bounty." Pacific Ancient and
Modern Language Association. San Jose State University, San Jose, CA. November7,
1997. "Uncomfortable Witness, Unfortunate Traveler: Derek Walcott and
the Refusal of History." Poetry and the Public Sphere: A Conference on
Contemporary Poetry, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. April 25, 1997. "’Pas Quittez Moi à Terre’: Derek Walcott, Witness and
Flight. "Northeast Modern Language Association, Philadelphia. April 4, 1997. "The New Sylvia Plath Studies." Presiding Officer, Panel on
20th-centuryAmerican Poetry. Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association,
University of California at Irvine. November 9, 1996. "John Ashbery’s Travel Agency." National Poetry Foundation,
University of Maine. June 13, 1996. "Robert Frost, Surface and Drift." Northeast Modern Language
Association, Montreal. April 22, 1996. "A Karaoke World." College English Association, New Orleans. April
4,1996. "Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘In the Waiting Room’ and the Question of
Travel. "Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, University of
California at Santa Barbara. November 6, 1995. To Top McDowell
Colony Fellow, Peterborough, Vermont, 2007 To Top phone:(973) 275.2173 Mailing address: To Top Maintained by: Jeffrey Gray (
grayjeff@shu.edu)
My articles have appeared in Contemporary Literature, Callaloo,
Profession, Papers on Language and Literature, and Prospects, among
others; my poetry has
appeared in the Atlantic, The American Poetry Review,
New Letters, The Literary Review, and others.
M.A. University of Washington, Seattle, 1970
B.A., University of Washington, Seattle, 1969
Teaching
English 5011 (Poetry & Cold War)
English 7018 (Poetry & Cold War)
English 7011 (Studies in Criticism)
English 7019 (Postcolonial Literature)
Publications
"Postcards and Sunsets: Problems of Revision in Elizabeth Bishop."
Elizabeth Bishop and the Jukebox. Columbus: Ohio
State UP, 2008. Forthcoming.
New York: Chelsea House, 2008. Forthcoming.
Monitor, 1997.
Presentations
"Precocious Testimony: Poetry and the Uncommemorable." Modern Language Association.
Chicago, IL. December 28, 2007.
"Poetry and 9/11." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language
Association. Bellingham, WA. November 3, 2007.
"Postcards and Sunsets: Elizabeth Bishop's Unpublished Drafts." American Literature
Association. Boston, MA. May 25, 2007.
Awards
Faculty
Fulbright Fellowship, Nanjing, China, 2006
Innovation Grant (Teaching, Learning and Technology Center), Seton Hall
University, Summer 2005
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall
University, 2003
Fulbright Fellowship, Guatemala, 2000.
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall University, 2000.
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall University, 1998.
National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute: "Performance and
Text in Caribbean Literature and Art," San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 9--July 21, 1997.
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall University, 1997.
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall University, 1996.
University Research Council Summer Stipend, Seton Hall University, 1995
Links
Contact Information
email grayjeff@shu.edu
English Department
Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ 07079