Rob Latham

Associate Professor of English and American Studies

Address: English Dept., University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242

Phone: (319) 335-0465

Email: rob-latham@uiowa.edu

CURRICULUM VITAE

SELECTED COURSES TAUGHT AT IOWA:

Undergraduate:

8:002 Postmodern Fiction

8:036 Reading Short Stories: The Fantastic Tradition

8:050 Sex and Popular Culture in the Postwar US

8:074 Selected American Authors: Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick

8:076 Selected Modern Authors: Angela Carter and J.G. Ballard

8:084 Topics in Culture and Identity: Queer Theory & Popular Culture

8:098 Honors Proseminar: Postmodern Techno-Cultures

8:100 Introduction to Criticism and Theory: Youth Subculture Studies

8:109 Literature and Culture of the 20th Century: The Experience of War

8:110 Selected Authors: Thomas Pynchon

8:140 Contemporary Scene in Fiction: Geographies of American Minimalism

8:142 Popular Literatures: Revisionist Fairy Tales

8:164 Literature and Culture of the 20th Century: Neo-Gothic

8:171 Topics in Film and Popular Culture: The Vampire in Literature and Film

8:172 Narrative and the Cinema: The Road in Postwar U.S. Culture

8:182 Science Fiction: From the New Wave to Cyberpunk and Beyond

8:188 Prose Writing by Women: Contemporary British Women Novelists

Graduate:

8:236 Readings in 20th Century Literature II: Science Fiction

8:270 Studies in Modernism/Postmodernism: Postmodern Literature, Culture, and Theory

8:270 Introduction to Cultural Studies: The Cultural Study of Commodification

8:462 Seminar in Cultural Studies: Cyborg Culture

8:465 Seminar in History, Literature, and American Culture: Technoculture Studies

45:250 Seminar: Topics in American Studies: American Subcultures

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EDUCATION

• 1989-1995 Ph.D., Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University.
• 1984-1988 B.A. with High Honors in English, University of Florida.

AWARDS

• 2001-4 Faculty Scholar Award
• 1998-99 Flexible Load Leave Assignment, Spring 1999
• 1996-97 James N. Murray Faculty Award for Teaching
• 1996-97 Old Gold Summer Fellowship

PUBLICATIONS

Books

• New Waves Rising: Science Fiction and the Critique of Techological Culture, manuscript in progress .
• Co-Editor (with Arthur B. Evans, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, and Carol McGuirk), Science Fiction: The SFS Anthology, under contract with Wesleyan University Press.
• Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption, University of Chicago Press, 2002.
• Co-editor (with Robert A. Collins) of Modes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twelfth Annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Greenwood Press, 1995.
• Co-editor (with Robert A. Collins) of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual, first two volumes, covering 1988 and 1989 volumes, published by Meckler Press; 1990 and 1991 volumes published by Greenwood Press.

Journals

• Co-Editor, Science-Fiction Studies
• Editorial Board, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Guest editor of a special issue on "Theories of/and Fantastic Literature," 8:4 (1997).

Articles and Book Chapters

• “The New Wave,” accepted for publication in Teaching Science Fiction, edited by Peter Wright and Andy Sawyer, Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming 2009.
• "Science Fiction: 1950-1963,” accepted for publication in The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, Routledge 2008.
• “New Wave, New Left: Sixties Convergences,” accepted for publication in Red Planets: Marxism, Science Fiction, Fantasy, edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville, Pluto Press, 2007.
• “Assassination Weapons: The Visual Culture of New Wave Science Fiction,” accepted for publication in Cutting Across Media: Interventionist Collage and the Politics of Appropriation, edited by Rudolf Kuenzli and Kembrew McLeod, forthcoming 2008.
• “Cyberpunk and the New Wave: Ruptures and Continuities,” The New York Review of Science Fiction 19:10 (June 2007): 1, 8-12, 14-16. To be reprinted, in emended form, as “‘A Rare State of Ferment’: SF Controversies from the New Wave to Cyberpunk,” in Beyond the Reality Studio: Cyberpunk and the New Millennium, eds. Graham J. Murphy and Sherryl Vint, Ohio State University Press, forthcoming 2008.
• “Urban Horror,” forthcoming in Icons of the Supernatural, edited by S.T. Joshi, Greenwood Press, 2007.
• “Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction,” forthcoming in The Yearbook of English Studies, 2006.
• “Sextrapolation in New Wave Science Fiction," in Science Fiction Studies 33:2 (July 2006). To be reprinted in Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, edited by Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, and Wendy Pearson, University of Liverpool Press, 2007.
• "'The Job of Dissevering Joy from Glop': John Clute's New Worlds Criticism" forthcoming in Portals: A Festchrift for John and Judith Clute, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, Old Earth Press, 2005.
• “A Young Man's Journey to Ladbroke Grove: M. John Harrison and the Evolution of the New Wave in Britain" forthcoming in Parietal Games: Nonfiction by and on M. John Harrison, edited by Mark Bould and Michelle Reid, Science Fiction Foundation Press, 2005.
• “New Worlds and the New Wave in Fandom: Fan Culture and the Reshaping of Science Fiction in the Sixties,” in Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association 242 (July/Auhust 2005).
• "The New Wave," in A Companion to Science Fiction, ed. David Seed, Blackwell Press, 2005,.
• "Fanzine Research: Some Sercon Musings," Science Fiction Studies 31:3 (November 2004).
• "Mutant Youth: Posthuman Fantasies and High-Tech Consumption in 1990s Science Fiction", forthcoming in Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation, edited by Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2002.
• "VR Noir: Kim Newman's The Night Mayor," forthcoming in a special "Noir" issue of Para*Doxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, 2001.
• "Screening Desire: Posthuman Couplings in Atom Egoyan's Speaking Parts and David Cronenberg's Videodrome," in Trajectories of the Fantastic, ed. Michael A. Morrison, Greenwood Press, 1997.
• "Consuming Youth: The Lost Boys Cruise Mallworld," in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, eds. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
• "The Men Who Walked On the Moon: Images of America in British New Wave Science Fiction of the 1960s and '70s," in Functions of the Fantastic, ed. Joe Sanders, Greenwood Press, 1996.
• "Subterranean Suburbia: Underneath the Smalltown Myth in the Two Versions of Invaders from Mars," in Science-Fiction Studies 22:2 (1995).
• "Youth Culture and Cybernetic Technologies," in Imaginative Futures: Proceedings of the 1993 Science Fiction Research Association Conference, edited by Milton T. Wolf and Daryl F. Mallett, Borgo Press, 1994.
• "Art, Trash, and Sexploitation: The Aesthetics of 'Le BadCinema'," in Vanishing Point: Studies in Comparative Literature 1 (1994).
• "Collage as Critique and Invention in the Fiction of William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker," in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 5:3 (1993). Reprinted in Modes of the Fantastic: Selected Papers from the Twelfth Annual Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995).
• "Inside/Outside: Horror in SF Novels, 1960 to the Present," in The Scream Factory: The Magazine of Horrors Past, Present and Future 13 (Spring 1994).
• "Some Thoughts on Modernism and Science Fiction (Suggested by Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth)," in The Celebration of the Fantastic, eds. Donald E. Morse, Marshall B. Tymn, and Csilla Bertha (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992).
• "There's No Place Like Home: Simulating Postmodern America in The Wizard of Oz and Blue Velvet," in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 1:4 (1988).
• "Criticism in the Age of Borges," in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 1:4 (1988). (This essay, and the one immediately above, appeared in a special issue, edited by Lance Olsen, devoted to exploring the intersection of contemporary fantasy and postmodern theory and culture.)

Other Publications

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INVITED TALKS AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

• “Cyberpunk and the New Wave: Ruptures and Continuities,” 28^th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 14-18, 2007.
• “Assassination Weapons: The Visual Culture of New Wave SF,” 27^th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 15-19, 2006.
• "The New Wave in the Zines: Fan Culture and the Reshaping of Science Fiction During the 1960s," 21st Eaton Conference: "Inventing the 21st Century: Many Worlds, Many Histories," Seattle, May 5-7, 2005.
• "Counterculture Collage: Experimental Techniques in 1960's 'New Wave' Science Fiction," "Collage as Cultural Practice" Conference, University of Iowa, March 24-26, 2005.
• "New Worlds and Old Guards: Towards an Anatomy of the New Wave Controversy," 26th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 16-20, 2005.
• "Beat versus Beatnik: Pop Cooptations of Kerouac and Company," University of Iowa Museum, January 28, 2005.
• "The Big Space Fuck: Sex and Science Fiction in the 1960s and '70s," Commonwealth of Science Fiction Conference at the University of Liverpool, August 5-8, 2004.
• "Science Fiction and the Critique of Technological Culture," Technoscience, Material Culture, and Everyday Life Conference in Hong Kong, March 26-29, 2003. Revised version delivered at the Midwestern American Studies Association Conference in Iowa City, April 2003, and at the 34th Annual Science Fiction Research Association Conference in Guelph, Ontario, June 26-30, 2003.
• Guest lecturer, Marxism and the Media, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, November 5, 2002.
• "Fast Sofas and Cyborg Couch Potatoes: Generation X on the Infobahn," keynote address delivered at "Cultures of Technology" symposium, Birkbeck College, University of London, November 1, 2002.
• "Couch Commandos vs. Zombie Systems: Digital Media and the Critique of Televisual Culture," 2nd Annual Craft, Critique, Culture Conference, University of Iowa, April 12-14, 2002.
• " Science Fiction and the Critique of Consumer Culture: Somtow Sucharitkul's Mallworld," 21st Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 22-26, 2000.
• "Back to the Future: Steampunks and Other Decadents," accepted for presentation at the 115th Annual Modern Language Association convention in Chicago, December 1999.
• "Surfing the Third Wave: Cyberpunk and Venture Capitalism," 20th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 17-22, 1999.
• "Teen Predators: Vampirism and Youth Consumption in S.P. Somtow's Vampire Junction," 19th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, March 11-15, 1998.
• "The Political Economy of Vampirism in 1970s America," 17th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 19-22, 1996.
• "Silicon Valley-Speak: The Third Wave Surfers of Capitalist Counterculture," California American Studies Association Conference, Sacramento, California, May 5-7, 1995.
• "Subterranean Suburbia: Underneath the Smalltown Myth in the Two Versions of Invaders from Mars," 15th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, March 16-20, 1994.
• "Youth Culture and Cybernetic Technologies," 24th Annual Science Fiction Research Association Conference, Reno, Nevada, June 17-20, 1993.
• "Artificial Kids: Cyberpunk's Technologies of Youth," 14th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 17-21, 1993.
• "Homoeroticism, American Style: Desire and Genre in Thelma and Louise, Point Break, and My Own Private Idaho," Popular Culture Association Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, March 18-21, 1992.
• "Screening Desire in Videodrome and Speaking Parts," Berkeley Symposium on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Visual Representation, UC-Berkeley, March 7-8, 1992.
• "Art, Trash and (S)exploitation: The Aesthetics of 'Le Bad Cinema'," Comparative Literature Conference on Aesthetics, Disciplines, Politics, Stanford, October 25, 1991.
• "How Critical is Critical Theory?: Foucault, Derrida, and the Critique of Cultural Imperialism," Conference on Multiculturalism and Institutions, Stanford, May 3-5, 1991.
• "Collage as Critique and Invention in the Fiction of William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker," 12th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 20-24, 1991.
• "Walking The Thin Blue Line: Public and Private Discourse in Errol Morris' Film,"12th Annual Ohio University Film Conference, Athens, Ohio, November 8-10, 1990.
• "The Men Who Walked On the Moon: Images of America in British Science Fiction of the 1960s and '70s," 21st Annual Science Fiction Research Association Conference, Long Beach, California, June 28-July 1, 1990. Revised version delivered at the 13th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 25-29, 1992.
• "Some Thoughts on Modernism and Science Fiction (Suggested by Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth)," 10th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 1989.

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