Title: Visiting Assistant Professor

Department: English

Office: Benson Hall 421 (Fall 2007)
Phone: 322-6026
Email: ann.m.mikkelsen@vanderbilt.edu

Degrees

• Ph.D., English, University of California, Irvine, 2001
• M.A., English, University of California, Irvine, 1997
• A.B., magna cum laude, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, 1994
• (Literature)

Research Area

• American poetry and poetics, Anglo-American modernism and the avant-garde, 20th-century American literature, pragmatism, theories of citizenship, literature and the emotions, Jewish-American literature, literature and the environment

Current Research

• Empathy: A Century of Feeling (book project): An analysis of the concept of “empathy” from its origins in the early twentieth century, viewed through the lens of texts ranging from immigrant fiction (Jewish American, Asian American) and sociological accounts of immigration (Chicago School), to postwar poetry (New York School) and psychoanalytic accounts of subjectivity. Currently in progress.
• Voices from the Field (book project): An exploration of how modern American poets, strongly influenced by philosophical pragmatism, have used the pastoral mode in order to depict the modern American subject and national community. Key figures include Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, and Lyn Hejinian. Complete manuscript.

Current Courses

• Women Poets in America (FYWS, Fall 2007)
• Postwar American Poetry (Spring 2008)

Previous Positions

• Assistant Professor, Florida State University, Fall 2005-Spring
• 2007
• Lecturer, History and Literature, Harvard University, 2003-2005
• Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002-2004
• Faculty Fellow, University of California, Irvine, 2001-2002

Professional Societies

• Modernist Studies Association
• Modern Language Association
• American Studies Association

Professional Honors

• First Year Assistant Professor Grant, Florida State University, Summer 2006
• Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2002-2004
• Faculty Fellow, University of California, Irvine, 2001-2002
• W. M. Keck Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library, Summer 2002
• Mellon Interpretive Seminar in the Humanities, Fellow, “Places of American Literature,” Caltech-Huntington Library,
• Summer 2001
• Regents Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, Spring 2001
• University of California Predoctoral Humanities Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, Fall 1995- Spring 2000

Publications

• “‘Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!’: Wallace Stevens’s Figurations of Masculinity,” Journal of Modern Literature, 27 (Fall 2004) 105-121.
• “‘The Truth About Us’: Pastoral, Pragmatism, and Paterson,” American Literature, 75 (September 2003) 601-627.
• “Lyn Hejinian” and “Barbara Guest,” Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. Ed. Eric Haralson. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001.