Department of Languages and Literature

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Kennedy

Todd Kennedy

Department of Languages and Literature

Nicholls State University

Thibodaux, LA 70310

Office: 985.448.4860

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor, Nicholls State University, August 2010-Present

Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Tulane University. August 2007-July 2010.

Education

Ph.D., 20th Century American Literature with a minor in film, University of South Carolina, Aug. 2007.

• Dissertation: Hitting the American Highway: The Ontology of the Hobo-Hero in Twentieth Century American Culture. Director: Judith Giblin James.

M.A., English and American Literature, New York University, May 2002.

• Thesis: “Bob Dylan: Troubadour for the Twentieth Century.” Director: Perry Meisel.

B.A., English and Fine Arts with a minor in history, Virginia Military Institute, May 2000.

St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Spring-Summer 1999.

• Completion of the Virginia Program at Oxford with a focus in Elizabethan and Jacobean history and literature.

Publications

“Off with Hollywood’s Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur.” Film Criticism. XXXV, 1 (Fall 2010), pp 37-59.

“Bob Dylan’s ‘Highway Shoes’: The Hobo-Hero’s Road through Modernity.” Intertexts. 13.1 (Spring 2009), pp 37-58.

“The Day the Gay Cowboy Broke Up With McCabe and Mrs. Miller: Brokeback Mountain’s Love Affair With Consumerist Conformity.” Co-written with Brittany Powell. Intertexts special edition on Brokeback Mountain. 10.2 (Fall 2007), 113-27.

“‘Like a Bird that Flew’: Attempts to Escape Time and Memory via the Road in Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.” Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery Proceedings. (Summer 2005), 114-18.

Review of Films by Gordon Ball.Studies in American Culture.(Fall2011), pp TBD (forthcoming).

Character profiles of Manhattan Transfer’s Ellen Thatcher, Jimmy Herf, and The Natural’s Roy Hobbs for Students Companion to American Literary Characters. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Detroit: Gale Group, (2008).

Presentations and Conferences

“On the Road to ‘Some’ Place: The Postmodern Hobo-Hero in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere.” October 6-9, 2011. Popular Culture Association of the South Conference. New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Remixing the Relationship between Media and Composition: Digital Rhetoric for a Visual Age.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. March 17-20, 2010. Louisville, Kentucky.

“Digital Discourse and Delivery in the Composition Classroom.” Tulane Faculty Symposium on Digital Trends (Invited Speaker). Feb 12, 2009.

“‘Walkin’ Down that Long, Lonesome Road, Babe’: The Ontology of the Hobo-Hero in 20th Century American Culture.” Tulane Faculty Works in Progress Series (Invited Speaker). October 24, 2008.

“In Defiance of the Modernist Metropolis: John Dos Passos and the ‘City of Destruction.’” In the City and On the Road: Stasis and Mobility in the Twentieth Century. March 24-25, 2006. University of South Carolina (Columbia).

Chair of SAMLA Hemingway Society Panel, “Hemingway and the External World: Cityscapes, Seascapes, Landscapes.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention. November 14-16, 2005. Atlanta, Georgia.

“‘Like a Bird that Flew’: Attempts to Escape Time and Memory via the Road in Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.” The Image of the Road in Literature, Media, and Society. March 10-12, 2005. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“War, the Code, and the Feminine in The Sun Also Rises.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention. November 12-14, 2004. Roanoke, Virginia.

“A Life on the Road: Mobility and the Naturalistic Metropolis in Dos Passos.” The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-45. June 6-8, 2004. Ohio State University (Columbus).

“Bridging Texts for the Visual Generation.” Building Bridges, Making Connections. February 10-12, 2004. Texas Tech University (Lubbock).

“Mechanical Metropolis: Urbanization as a Destructive Force in John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer.” Revisiting Dos Passos: U.S.A. and American Culture. May 8, 2003. University of California at Los Angeles.

“Naturalizing the City: Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer.” Repression and Subversion in the Nineteenth Century. March 14-15, 2003. University of South Carolina.

Teaching Experience

Literature Courses: American Lit Survey, Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism, 20th Century Fiction, Baseball Lit, The Lost Generation, Depictions of Violence Toward Women, Women Writers.

Film Courses: Intro to Film, Intro to Film Culture, Film Genres: The Western, Three Female Auteurs.

Honors Collouquia: Modernism: Literature, Film, Culture.

Writing Courses: Composition, Composition for the Visual Learner, Technical Writing

Other Courses: Women Writers (USC Dept. of Women’s Studies) & The Myth of Popular Culture (Tulane Interdisciplinary Experience Seminar).

Honors and Awards

Finalist for the Outstanding Freshman Advocate Award. 2006. Awarded by the University of South Carolina to the faculty or staff member who has made the most “significant and extraordinary contributions to the academic, professional, and/or personal lives of first-year students at USC.”

W.T.C. Bates Award for Outstanding Graduate Writing. 2005. Awarded by the English Department of the University of South Carolina, for my paper “‘Like a Bird that Flew’ Attempts to Avoid Time and Memory via the Road in Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.”

Two Thumbs Up Award. 2005.Awarded by the Department of Disability Services at the University of South Carolina, the award is presented to faculty and staff who have made a “positive impact” on students with disabilities.

Alpha Chi Omega Teacher of the Month. February 2004. Awarded by members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority at the University of South Carolina.

Bates House Teacher of the Month. November 2003 and March 2004. Awarded by residents of Bates Residence Hall at the University of South Carolina.

Most Exciting Classroom Presence. 2004. Voted by the graduate students in the English Department at the University of South Carolina.

John E. Woodward ’23 Scholarship. 2000-2007. Awarded by the Virginia Military Institute’s Department of Career Services. Open to any VMI alumnus excelling in a post-graduate degree in any field of study.

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Kennedy

Professional and University Service

Reviewer of manuscripts for South AtlanticReview (2006) & Feminist Media Studies (2011-present)

Advisor to the N.S.U. English Society. 2010-present.

Chair, N.S.U.’s Minor in Film Studies. 2011-present.

Service on various departmental committees at N.S.U.: Curriculum, Film Minor (Chair), Grant-writing, Fletcher Speaker Series, Recruitment, Film Society, English Society (Co-Chair). 2010-present.

Director of honors thesis: Jena McCoy (N.S.U. 2010-2011).

Service on honors thesis committee: Kenneth Lota (T.U. 2009-10).

Director of two independent studies and one writing intensive component(T.U. 2008-2009).

Group Leader for Tulane University’s First-Year Reading Initiative. 2007-2010.

Tri-Chair of the USC American Literature Colloquium. 2005-2006.

President of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Hemingway Society. 2004-2005.

Co-Lead Coordinator (and Founding Organizer) for the University of South Carolina’s Annual Twentieth Century Conference. 2004-2006. An International, Interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the USC Departments of English and Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.

USC Graduate English Association Sports Director. 2003-2005.

Other Experience

Editor-in-Chief of The Cadet, VMI’s official student-run newspaper. 1999-2000.

NYU English Department graduate assistant. 2001-2002.

Reading tutor for inner-city elementary school children in Harlem, New York. 2001.

Instructor of Record for English 100, 101, and 102 at Midlands Technical College. 2004-2006.

Graduate Course Work

Modern British Novel (NYU-Perry Meisel), Christopher Marlowe: Atheism & Homosexuality in Renaissance Drama (NYU-John Guillory), Seventeenth-Century Poetry (NYU-Anthony Lowe), The Myth of Popular Culture (NYU-Perry Meisel), Contemporary American Novel (NYU-Josephine Hendin), The Renaissance in England—Audit (NYU-Anthony Lowe), American Fiction 1900-1945 (NYU-Josephine Hendin), Introduction to Middle English (NYU-Mary Caruthers), Shakespeare’s Tragedies (NYU-John Guillory), American Film 1960-Present (NYU-Robert Sklar), Modern American Novel (USC-Greg Forter), American Realism & Naturalism (USC-Cynthia Davis), Gender & Loss in Modern American Literature (USC-Greg Forter), Film Genres: The Musical (USC-Susan Courtney), The British Novel in the Twentieth Century (USC-Tom Rice), American Fiction after World War II (USC-David Cowart), Faulkner & His Successors (USC-Keen Butterworth), The Image of the Road in Film (USC-Susan Courtney), Modern Literary Theory (USC-Meili Steele).

References

For an evaluation of my research abilities, please contact my mentor: Josephine Gattuso Hendin, Tiro A. Segno Professor of Italian American Studies, Department of English, New York University. .

For an evaluation of my teaching abilities, please contact the Director of First Year English at Tulane: TR Johnson, Associate Professor, Department of English, Tulane University. .

For an evaluation of my ability to research and teach film, please contact the head of USC’s Film Department: Susan Courtney, Associate Professor, Department of Film, University of South Carolina. .