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Program: English Ph.D.
Began program in 2002
Area of Study: Irish literature, space and practice theories, postcolonialism
Office: 70 EPB
E-Mail: thomas-keegan@uiowa.edu
A New Englander by birth, I left Massachusetts in 1998 to pursue a BA in English and bioethics from the University of Virginia. I arrived at Iowa in the fall of 2002 as a Crossing Borders Fellow - examining the multiformed Irish diaspora. And while my interests range widely from postcolonial theory to comic books, Irish film to practice approaches to literature, and book binding to sexuality studies, I found myself drawn to resonances between the Irish and Harlem Renaissances. My study of the shared and conflicted postcolonial pasts of both movements lead me to seek out spaces of accommodation and acceptance for members of both movements. Almost inevitably I arrived at the pub. A space steeped in insider/outsider practices, the pub offers us an opportunity to examine how reliant on the commonplace, the daily movements, the routine motions identity remains. My dissertation examines the role of the pub in twentieth century Irish literature and the various opportunities afforded or prohibitions placed on outsider figures in Irish pubs. I also consider the influence of the pub as both a space for literary and filmic creation and stage upon which daily dramas unfold.
In addition to my scholarly pursuits, I have taught regularly in the departments of rhetoric and English since 2003. In 2005 I received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the University of Iowa. My teaching typically draws from a variety of media as I attempt to make my students better readers of the literature on the bookshelves and in their daily lives.
Introduction and co-edited, Iowa Journal of Cultural
Studies. Kamiks issue, Spring 2005.
Suzanne Day, Mary Francis, and Janet McNeil entries in Irish
Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. ed. Alex Gonzalez, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
010:001: Rhetoric I - Spring 2005
010:002: Rhetoric II - Spring 2004
010:003: Accelerated Rhetoric - Fall 2003, Fall 2004
08G:001: Interpretation of Literature - Fall 2005, Spring 2006
08G:011: Literature and Sexualities - Fall 2006