Marilyn Atlas
Associate Professor
American Literature
Office: Ellis 328
Office Phone: 593-2760
Email: atlas@ohio.edu
Degrees
Ph.D. March 1979, Michigan State University
A.M. December 1973, University of Illinois (Urbana, Champaign)
A.B. High Honors in Liberal Arts and Sciences with Distinction in English Education,
June l973, University of Illinois
B.S. High Honors in Liberal arts and Sciences with Distinction in Psychology, August
l972, University of Illinois
Publications
“Exiles All: Becoming the Individual in the Lighthouse Looking out, and Margaret Anderson’s My Thirty Years’ War.” Inter/Sections: Isagani R. Cruz and Friends (Festschrift in Honor of Isagani R. Cruz), Ed. David Jonathon Y. Bayot. Manila, Philippines. De La Salle University/Anvil Publishing, 2010. 159-174, (published in hardbound and paperback).
“One Bostonian’s Romantic, Realistic, and Modern View of the Midwest: Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843.” Ed. Jane Waterman. Midwestern Miscellany Special Issue “The Midwest as Seen by Non - Midwestern Writers.” XXXVIII Spring/Fall 2010: 24-36.
“From Novel to Plays: Zona Gale and the Marriage Plot in Three Versions of Miss Lulu Bett,” Midwestern Miscellany XXX 2002: 35-45. Reprinted in Drama Criticism.
New York: Gale, 2008.
“From Novel to Plays: Zona Gale and the Marriage Plot in Three Versions of Miss Lulu Bett,” Midwestern Miscellany XXX 2002: 35-45 (appeared December 2003).
“Foreword,” “In the Days of Serfdom” and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy, 1911. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. vii-ix.
“Sherwood Anderson and the Women of Winesburg.” In Critical Essays on Sherwood Anderson, edited by David D. Anderson. New York: G.K. Hall and Company. 1981, 250-265. Reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Volume 123. New York: Gale, 2002. 9-17.
“The Issue of Literacy in America: Slave Narratives and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye,” MidAmerica XXVII 2000. 106-119 (appeared in 2002).
“Ellen Van Volkenburg, Women Building Chicago: A Biographical Dictionary1790-1990. Ed. Rima Lunin Schulz and Adele Hast. Bloomington, Indiana: University Press, 2001, 909-911.
“Margaret Anderson,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 37-40.
“Alice Gerstenberg,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 218-220.
“Harriet Monroe,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 364-366.
“Toni Morrison,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 370-375.
“Eunice Tietjens,” Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001: 495-497.
“Between the Mission and the Factory: Eunice Tietjens’ Profiles from China,” Midwestern Miscellany 27 (Fall, 1999): 17-26.
Curriculum Vitae
Dissertation
“A Psychobiographical Approach to Moby-Dick”
Director: C. David Mead
This dissertation attempts to trace and illuminate the circle and line imagery of the novel by examining their relationship to the novel’s characterization as well as to the author’s personality, friendships, and family construction.
Editorships
Editor, Conversations: Cynthia Ozick, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press (under contract for 2013).
Guest Editor, Special Issue on “Writing Chicago, ”Midwestern Miscellany, 2013 (in process).
Editorial Board Committee for MidAmerica and Midwestern Miscellany, 2004- present.
Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature II, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013 (in process).
Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature I, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Guest Editor, Special Issue on Toni Morrison, Midwestern Miscellany 24 (1996).
Editorial Board, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, l992-present.
Associate Editor, The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter, East Lansing, Michigan, l978-1988.
Awards and Honors
Editorial Board, Senior Editor, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature I, 1992--present
Fulbright, Manila, Philippines, May-August 1985
Selected Grants
Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Professional Development Award (“’Alone Together’”: A Closer Look at Intimacy, Authority and Relationships Between Humans and Technology”), Costa Rica IPCA, Summer 2011
Arts and Sciences (Ohio Univeristy) Professional Development Award ( “Geography and Identity: The Ireland of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce”), Summer 2003.
Arts and Sciences (Ohio University) Professional Development Award (“Modernism in Paris”), 2001
Selected Regional, National and International Lectures:
Dawn Powell’s Dance Night and “Midwest Small Town Poison” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, January 2012.
“Ha, ha, ha, Ouch: Dance Night, Trip Night, Black, Black, Dawn Powell, or ‘A Capacity to go Overboard is a requisite for a Full-Grown-Mind,’” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2011.
“Not Obsolete Yet, But Living on the Edge: Humans in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot,”International Popular Culture, American Culture Conference, San Jose, Cost Rica, July 2011.
“’One Man’s Ceiling is Anothr Man’s Floor’: Tracy Letts’s Superior Donuts’ Shortened Visit to Broadway,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2011.
“Patricia Hampl, Minnesota and The Florist’s Daughter: Memoir as History, (Part of the panel, Narrating Lives & Midwestern Literary Self- Consciousness, Presidential Theme, Modern Language Association, Los Angeles, California, January 2011.
“Terror, the Midwest, and the Lure of the Grotesque in Tracy Letts’s August, Osage County, Midwest/Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 2010.
“Staging the Midwest: Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County and Geography, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2010.
“Radical Styles and Thought in Esther Broner’s A Weave of Women (invited lecture) Jewish Studies and Women’s Studies Departments at Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, April 2010.
“’I’m Fine. Just got the Plains’: Geography and Sex in Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 2009.
“A Novel Worth Remembering and a Place Impossible to Forget: Dawn Powell’s Dance Night, Lampton, Ohio, Midwest Fantasy, and Midwest Migration,” Midwest/Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2009.
“Place and Space in Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2009.
“A Mercy or Mercy!” Toni Morrison’s Recent Fable or Failure,” Panel discussion with Dr. Melody Zajdel, Montana State University, International Popular Culture Convention, Turku, Finland, June 2009.
“Margaret Anderson’s The Unknowable Gurdjieff: The Journey West and the Journey Inward,” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, California, December 2008.
“Middle Class, in the Middle of America, in the Middle of the Century: Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter, Midwest/Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2008.
“The Midwest as Place and Symbol: Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843,” Society for the Study of Midwestern literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2008.
“Introducing Etgar Keret,” Wexner Center for the Arts, May 2008.
“Etgar Keret, Woody Allen and Lessons in Intertextuality or What’s Four Decades and Different Countries Among Friends?” Beth Tikvah Lecture Series, Columbus, Ohio, February 2007.
“Flipping Out With Etgar Keret: Israeli Funny Guy,”Beth Tikvah Lecture Series, Columbus, Ohio, February 2007.
“The Lake Front and the City: Margaret Anderson’s My Thirty Years’ War and Chicago,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, Illinois, December 2007.
“Toni Morrison’s Eulogy for James Baldwin: Realism, Ambivalence, Fertility and Writing the Stories One Needs to Read,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, Ohio, November 2007.
“Ethnicity, Geography, and Humor in Adam Langer’s Crossing California and the Washington Story,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, East Lansing, Michigan, May 2007.
Professional Experience
1984--2012: Associate Professor of English (tenured) at Ohio University
1985: Visiting Professor at De La Salle University in Manila Philippines
1980--1982: Director of Women’s Studies at Ohio University
Selected Professional Service
“Margaret Fuller: Pioneer, Transcendentalist, and Scholar,” Television Conversation with Lois Whaley. Women Today & Yesterday, Public Television, Time-Warner Cable Channel 23. Athens, Ohio Community Access, Week of July 23, 2010
Prize Coordinator for the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature: Poetry, Creative Writing, and Criticism, 2003 to the present
Served as Outside Evaluator for Tenure and Promotion at Other Institutions.
“Wired for Books,” International radio broadcasts on Leo Tolstoy, Raymond Carver, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston. Heard by thousands of people. Some programs translated into other languages. WOUB: Ohio University: David Kurz moderator and producer. Distribution 1996 to the present
Director of “Making Our Lives A Study: A Conference on Feminist Criticism and Creativity” (over 400 in attendance), Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, March l982
Courses
Areas of Special Interest in Literature:
Early American
American Renaissance
American Modernism
Twentieth Century Literature
Midwestern Literature
Women's Literature
Jewish Literature
Israeli Literature
Literary History
Literary Theory
Canon Formation
Selected Classes Taught at Ohio University
(an asterisk identifies that I was the individual who designed the class for inclusion in Ohio University's English department's curriculum and was the first to teach it at Ohio University under its own number - - the classes needed approval from the University Curriculum Committee before we could make it a permanent part of our curriculum with its exclusive number I shepherded these three class through the process so they are especially close to my heart).
English 570N/ 774A: American Modernisms
English 570P/775B: American Literature from the Civil War to 1914
English 460: The Midwest in Fiction
English 460: Melville, The American Renaissance, and Popular Culture
English 460: The Chicago Literary Renaissance
English 465: Toni Morrison's Fiction and the Study of Place
English 465: Modernisms - - Virginia Woolf and James Joyce
English 306J: Women and Writing (memoir)
English 321, 322, 323: American literature - - Beginnings to 1865; 1865 to 1914; and 1914 to the present
English 327: African American Fiction (James Baldwin and Toni Morrison)
*English 325: Women's Literature
*English 324a: Jewish American Literature
*English 334: Israeli Literature
English 399T/478T: Twentieth Century American and British Tutorial