Sharon Cumberland, PhD

Sharon Cumberland CV (PDF)

Teaching and Research Interests

Welcome statement (teaching/research/personal interests): My interests are always expanding, but after spending a year studying New Media at MIT during my last sabbatical, I developed an abiding interest in the new ways people have found to tell stories, and the way the internet and other electronic media have enabled more and more people to tell their stories, especially women. My theoretical approach to this field is through orality/literacy theory and the work of the great Jesuit scholar, Walter J. Ong. I am also very committed to my life as a poet--I love to teach poetry both at S.U. and to the seniors at the Greenwood Senior Center. I am now on the second revision of my first novel, and have been writing more and more short stories, so I have added a new writing interest which I am happy to share with students. And, as many of you know or will discover, I love opera, and will take you with me to the opera whenever you take a class with me.
 
Interests: Literature of the American South; Slave Narratives and Slave Owner Narratives, New Media, Fan Fiction, Graphic Novels, Emerging Electronic Literary Forms, History of Narrative, Oral Narrative, Poetry Writing, Fiction Writing
 
Current and Recent Courses: Fiction of the American South (CT); Literature, the Arts, and Society (Inter disciplinary); Poetry Writing and Advanced Poetry Writing; 20th Century American Literature; Mythology; The History of Narrative from Homer to Hypertext; Modern Poetry; Freshman Seminars
 
Dream or Future Courses: In creative writing: Once I have published a novel(s), I would like to share my experiences with students who are interested in writing longer forms. In Lit: I would love to teach a course on the pastoral, from Theocritus to the present.

Biography

B.A. Coe College
M.A. Drake University
M.Phil and Ph.D. The Graduate Center of the City University of New York