Douglas Dowland

Program: English Ph.D. &
Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) certificate program
Began program in 2001
Area of Study: 20th Century American Literature and Culture
Office: 58 EPB
E-Mail: douglas-dowland@uiowa.edu

I received by BA from the Honors College at Michigan State in 2001, with majors in History and English and minors in Political Theory, Art History and Anthropology. I like to dabble, but at the consequence of being told by historians that I am too "literary," and by litterateurs that I am too "historical." Fenced in on both sides, I find that I am a slightly hesitant practitioner of cultural studies.

My primary research area is American Literature (and Culture) during the Cold War. I work mostly with the role of emotions in nonfiction, which stems from a larger concern with the development and maintenance of American national identity in the twentieth century. So, in my spare time, I continue to read ethnography, psychoanalytic theory and narratology.

I've taught several courses in our General Education Literature program, including The Interpretation of Literature, Literature and Sexualities, Narrative Literature (now called Fiction(s)), Drama and American Lives. I've also served for the past two years on the program's Textbook Committee, chairing it last year. I am currently teaching in the Sexuality Studies Program as well; this year, a course on bisexuality in America, and next year a course on sexuality in the American midwest.

Three years ago, I began my investment in departmental politics by serving as co-president of the Association of Graduate Students in English (AGSE). I have worked on the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (IJCS) for three years now; one year as Review Editor and the last two as Executive Editor, a position I'll be retiring from next year.

My first article, ornately titled "'Macrocosm of Microcosm Me': Epistemophilia and the Construction of American National Identity in Steinbeck's Travels with Charley," is forthcoming in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory There are also conference papers on Harper Lee, Simone de Beauvoir, Truman Capote and Sarah Vowell that will be, perpetually and eventually, revised into potential publications.

You'll find a truncated C.V., as well as an archive of course syllabi, on my personal homepage.