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Carla Billitteri
Associate Professor
311 Neville Hall
(207) 581-3836
carla.billitteri(nospam)@umit.maine.edu
When emailing this address, remove the (nospam) control.
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**Office Hours for Spring 2009: Tuesday and Thursday, By Appointment Only.**
Academic Positions
Current
Associate Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2008-
Associate Faculty, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, 2008-
External Faculty, Doctoral Program in Anglo-American Studies, University of Catania, Italy, 2003-
Examiner, Critical Languages Program, University of Maine, 2000-
Previous
Assistant Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2002-2008
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2001-2002
Lecturer, University of Maine, English Department, 1999-2001
Lecturer, D'Youville College, English Department, 1999
Classes Taught
Graduate
ENG 649: Seminar in Modern & Postmodern American Poetry - Realism and Avant-Garde American Poetries, 1920-present (Spring 2009)
ENG 649, Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Spring 2007)
ENG 580, Hermeneutics and Poetics (Spring 2005)
ENG 549, Inter-living: Gender Constitution and Narrativization of Gender (Fall 2007)
ENG 549, Feminist Narratology (Fall 2003)
ENG 529, William Carlos Williams - cotaught with Robert Creeley (Fall 2002)
ENG 529, Charles Olson - cotaught with Robert Creeley (Fall 2001)
Undergraduate
ENG 481, Thinking Otherwise: Experimental Women Writers, 1914-2005 (Spring 2006)
ENG 481, Memory, Identity, Transactional Selves (Spring 2004)
ENG 481, Modern and Contemporary Experimental Women Writers (Spring 2002)
ENG 471, Literature and Gender Theory (Spring 2007)
ENG 471, Feminist Theory: The Discourse of Femininity (Spring 2003)
ENG 471, Feminist Theory: Language and Gender (Spring 2001)
ENG 458, British Modernism (Fall 2007)
ENG 458, Contemporary British Literature (Fall 2000)
ENG 430, European Avant-Garde Theatre (Fall 2008)
ENG 271, The Act of Interpretation (Spring 2004-Fall 2008) (core course)
ENG 242, American Literature Survey Part 2 (Spring 2002)
ENG 212, Persuasive and Analytical Writing (Fall 2001, Spring 2003, Fall 2006) ENG 170, Foundations of Literary Analysis (Fall 1999-Spring 2001; Spring 2006) (core course for the major)
HON 397, Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Fall 2002)
HON 397, Phenomenology and Semiotics of Meaning (Fall 2000)
HON 102, The Development of Western Thought (Spring 2002)
HON 101, The Development of Western Thought (Fall 2001)
Education
Ph.D., English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2001
M.A., English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995
Laurea, magna cum laude, Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Catania, Italy, 1989
Foreign Languages
Italian (native speaker) and French
Current Book Project
I am currently working on two books: a study of politics and aesthetics among the modernist poets and a monograph on Delmore Schwartz for European scholars.
Areas of Specialization
Primary
Poetry and Poetics, Critical Theory
Additional
Gender and Literature, Narratology, Drama, Italian Poetry
Grants and Fellowships
Curriculum Development Grant, Women's Studies Program, University of Maine at Orono, Summer 2003
Research Fellowship, Graduate Group in Marxist Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1994-1995
Research Fellowship, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 1989
Research Grant, University of Catania, Italy, 1989
Research Fellowship, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 1988
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Publications
Book
Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson: The American Cratylus (accepted for publication by Palgrave Macmillan)
Abstract: This book takes up the utopian desire for a perfect language of words that gives direct expression to the real, known in Western thought as Cratylism, and its impact on the social visions and poetic projects of three of the most intellectually ambitious of American writers, Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson. A coda looks at the work of the Language writers, who carry forward this tradition in surprising ways. Based on close readings of theoretical and poetic texts, and drawing on archival research, Language and the Renewal of Society makes two basic claims: that belief in an intrinsic relationship between words and things is linked in American poetry to utopian social projects; and that poets with a deep understanding of how language operates are nonetheless attracted to this belief -- despite recognizing its fantastic elements -- because it allows them to articulate a social mandate for poetry.
Articles
"Stories, Not History: Laura Riding's Progress of Truth," Arizona Quarterly, forthcoming spring 2009
"A Form of Tidiness: Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Work of Poetry-Writing," Textual Practice 22.2 (June 2008): 315-36
"Lyn Hejinian's Poetics of the Middle," Aerial 10, forthcoming
"The Passion of Becoming an Object," Paideuma 35.1-2 (Spring-Fall 2006): 17-32
"William Carlos Williams and the Politics of Form," The Journal of Modern Literature 30:2 (Winter 2007): 42-63
"Riding-Graves: The Meaning of Collaboration," Gravesiana 3:1 (2007): 86-100.
"Doomsday: Passages in Laura Riding's Poetics," Chloroform: An Aesthetics of Critical Writing, Spring 1997. 174-84
Notes
"Introduction to Alda Merini," "I am a Furious Little Bee" Oakland, CA: Hooke Press, 2008
"O sorriso de Laura Riding" (Laura Riding's Smile), co-authored with Benjamin Friedlander, in Laura Riding, Mindscapes: Poemas, edited and translated by Rodrigo Garcia Lopes (Brazil: Illuminuras, 2004). 245-47
"Translator's Note: Patrizia Vicinelli," How2, September 2000
"Five Italian Poets: Introductory Remarks," 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, edited by Charles Bernstein, published as Boundary2 26:1, Spring 1999
"Partage of Realities: A Logic of Inframodal Destinerrance," Rif/t, no. 4, January 1995
Translations
"Maria Attanasio, Four Poems," Aufgabe 7, 2008
Alda Merini, I am a Furious Little Bee (Oakland, CA: Hooke Press, forthcoming)
"Salvatore Camilleri, 'Four Hats'" (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander), Fascicle, no. 1, Summer 2005
"Joan Perucho, 'Twenty Three Poems'" (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander), Fascicle, no. 1, Summer 2005
Italian Epigrams (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander), Catania: Porci con le Ali, 2001
"Patrizia Vicinelli, Three Poems," How2, September 2000
"Five Italian Authors: Gianni D'Elia, Mara Cini, Milli Graffi, Flavio Ermini, Renato Barilli," 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, edited by Charles Bernstein, Boundary2 26:1, Spring 1999
"Cieli" and "Finisterre" (from Nanni Balestrini, Ipocalisse), Private Arts, Spring 1998
"Sommerbird" and "Vortex" (from Nanni Balestrini, Ipocalisse), Rif/t, no. 4, January 1995
"Turchese" (from Gianni D'Elia, Non per chi va), I Am a Child: Poetry After Robert Duncan and Bruce Andrews, edited by William R. Howe (Buffalo: Tailspin Press, 1995)
Conferences
"'A Necessary Kind of Experience': Carla Harryman's Textual Hybridity," Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, planned presentation for February 2008
"Memetics of the Image: The Late Poetics of Charles Olson," American Literature Association, Boston, May 2007
"'A Relation Whose Form is Contradiction': Figurations of Self in Paul Valéry and Laura (Riding) Jackson," Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Chicago, November 2005
"A Form of Tidiness: Laura Riding's Responses to 1930s Political Crises," Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Vancouver, B. C., September 2004
"Auratic Politics: The Aristocratic Revolution of Williams Carlos Williams," Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
"The Beautiful Semblance of Authenticity," Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Birmingham, U. K., September 2003
"Lyn Hejinian's Poetics of Uncertainty," Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 2003
"Riding/Graves: The Meaning of Collaboration," Graves Conference 2000: Robert Graves in America, State University of New York at Buffalo, June 2000
"Fables of Meaning: History and Storytelling in Laura Riding's Short Fiction," Symposium on Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language, Cornell University, October 1998
"The Passion of Becoming an Object: The Matter of Subjectivity in Language Writing," Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 1998
"Until the End of History: Laura Riding's Progress of Stories," NEMLA Conference, Philadelphia, April 1997
"Charles Olson and the Symbiotic Economy of Speech and Writing," Poetries of the 1950s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 1996
"Notes on Translating Nanni Balestrini's Ipocalisse," The Future of Poetry, State University of New York at Albany, January 1995
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Lectures
"Walt Whitman and the Power of Names," University of Catania, Italy, July 2008
"Politics and Poetry in the 1930s: Laura (Riding) Jackson," Socialist and Marxist Studies Luncheon Series, University of Maine, April 2007
"Charles Olson and the Matter of Writing," University of Catania, Italy, July 2006
"Truth or Method: Laura (Riding) Jackson's Poetic Project," University of Catania, Italy, July 2005
"Luigi Pirandello's Theatre: Six Characters in Search of an Author," The Maine Masque, University of Maine, April 2005
"Acts of Reading, Acts of Gender: The Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism." Women in the Curriculum Lunch Series, University of Maine, November 2004
"William Carlos Williams and the Politics of Form," University of Catania, Italy, July 2004
"Interpellation, Gender, and the Question of the Feminine in Feminist Theory," Graduate Program in Women's Studies, University of Maine, November 2003
"A Poetics of Uncertainty," University of Catania, Italy, July 2003
"Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse: An Epistemic Feminist Novel," Honors College, University of Maine, Spring 2002
Other Scholarly Activity
Chair, Panel on “Strange Visions: Versions of the Visual in Contemporary Women’s Cross-Genre Poetry,” Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women’s Poetry since 1900, Duquesne University, September 2008
Chair, Plenary Poetry Reading by Nicole Brossard, The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
Chair, Panel on “Language Poetry and Theory,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
Chair, Panel on “New Narrative, New Sentence, New Left,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
Chair, Panel on “Erotics, Embodiment, Negation,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
Conference Steering Committee, The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, Fall 2007-Summer 2008
Chair, Plenary Poetry Reading by Lyn Hejinian, Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
Chair, Panel on Gwendolyn Brooks, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
Reading of Italian Epigrams (co-translated and co-presented with Benjamin Friedlander), Terry Plunket Poetry Festival, University of Maine at Augusta, April 2004
Respondent, Seminar on Modernism and Politics, Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Birmingham, U.K., September 2003
Conference Committee, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at
Orono, Fall 2003-Summer 2004
Professional Activity
University of Maine, Faculty Senate, Fall 2004-Spring 2008
Service and Outreach Committee, Faculty Senate, Fall 2007-Spring 2008
CLAS Representative, Committee on Committees, Faculty Senate, Fall 2004-Spring 2007
Association for the Studies of Narrative, 2002-2005
Modern Language Association, 2000-present
Modernist Studies Association, 2000-present
Critical Languages Program, University of Maine, 1999-present
International Students Committee, English Department, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995-1997
Conference Organizer, Graduate Conference in Marxist Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, Spring 1995
