Master of Fine Arts

Nanora Sweet

 

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Title: Associate Professor
Office: 449 Lucas
Phone: (314) 516-5512
Email: sweet@umsl.edu

Education:

Ph.D. University of Michigan (Romanticism, poetry, literary and feminist theory)
M.A. University of Missouri-Columbia (thesis: "Byron and the Sublime")
B.A. University of Michigan (major: English, minor: History)
Full C.V.

Profile
Because I am both a poet and a critic, my poetry hews closely to the occasions of everyday life and other people's poetry inspires me to be its advocate. This side of me appears in my chapbook Mix of Securities and in my journalistic and community work. Because I am a Romanticist and feminist, I find aesthetics and ideas inseparable from our public life and common destiny. This side of me appears in my chapbook Rotogravure, with its St. Louis cityscapes and midcontinental panoramas, but also in my studious commitment to Romantic poet Felicia Hemans, whose work is of international scope. Because I am all this and a teacher, my brief will always be about the seamlessness of the literary life, from its place in a student's aesthetic and intellectual biography, to the continuous challenges it offers any serious writer, in the work of revising, editing, performing, publicizing, fundraising, community organizing-all the inspired but also prosaic work at the interface of writing and the world. Because writing is always by someone about something, in my teaching writing matters because that someone and that something matter.

Current Teaching Interests
Poetry reading and writing, Gender in Culture, Romantic-era Writing, Internationalism and Orientalism, Literary Theory

Creative and Scholarly Activities

Books of Poetry:
Mix of Securities (chapbook: Snark Publishing, 2005)
Rotogravure (chapbook: Cherry Pie Press, 2006)
Both chapbooks are available at the University Bookstore and Left Bank Books.

Other Poetry:
Poems have appeared in River Styx, Ascent, Quartet, Concerning Poetry, Confrontation, Axeltree, Poetry Bag, Image, Webster Review, Breathing Out, and elsewhere

Poetry Prizes:
Academy of American Poets First Place, Washington University, 1981
St. Louis Wednesday Club First Places, 1800, 1882
Finalist, Denver Quarterly c1990

Other Awards:
Dissertation, "The Bowl of Liberty: Felicia Hemans and the Romantic Mediterranean", received Heberle Award from the University of Michigan Department of English
2005 Woman of Worth, St. Louis Older Women's League

Readings and Presentations:
Numerous poetry readings as for River Styx at Duff's in St. Louis and Genesis House in Ann Arbor
Numerous conference talks as at Modern Language Association and British Association for Romantic Studies

Editorial Projects:
Co-editor, Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century (2001)
Co-editor, The Sceptic: A Byron-Hemans Dialogue (2004)
Co-editor, Breathing Out: Poems by Loosely Identified (2004)
Guest Editor, Natural Bridge 16: special section, Writers Responding to Women Writers (2006)

Articles, Chapters, Reviews:
In journals: English Journal, minnesota review, European Romantic Review, European Journal of English Studies, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Prose Studies, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, Studies in Romanticism, Keats-Shelley Journal, Wordsworth Circle, Clio, Modern Philology

In collections: At the Limits of Romanticism, The Novel's Seductions, The Lessons of Romanticism, Romanticism's Debatable Lands, Palgrave Advances in Byron Studies

Web Resources:

Contributor to Romantic Circles, Romantic Chronology, Romanticism on the Net, A Celebration of Women Writers

Personal Page with Student Projects and Hemans Scholarship: http://www.umsl.edu/~sweet/

Popular Press Appearances:

Reviewer for St Louis Post-Dispatch
Featured in St Louis Post-Dispatch (24 May 04, 21 Jan 07)

Consultancies:

Poetry in the Schools, Omaha, Nebraska
St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Stoppard's Arcadia
Wishbone, PBS Series

Board Memberships:

River Styx
Institute for Women's and Gender Studies, Univ. Missouri-St. Louis
Blackwell's Literature Compass

Organizations:

Community: Loosely Identified-a St. Louis Women's Poetry Workshop, St. Louis Poetry Center
Feminist: National Organization for Women
Scholarly: Byron Society, Société des etudes staëliennes, many others

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