du Plessis 1
MICHAEL DU PLESSIS
Updated: 15 October, 2015
EDUCATION
2014Master in Professional Writing, University of Southern California
1993Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Southern California; dissertation title,Queer Pasts Now: Historical Fictions in Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Film, Tania Modleski and Nancy Vickers, joint supervisors
1988M.A., English, cum laude, English, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; thesis title, Strings of Language: Donald Barthelme and the Discourses of Postmodernism, Hazel Cohen, supervisor
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2009-nowAssociate Professor (Teaching), Comparative Literature and English, University of Southern California
2007-2009Lecturer, Comparative Literature and English, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
2006-2007AdjunctInstructor, English, Comparative Literature, and French and Italian, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
2003-2007Data Collector and Researcher (“Professional Expert”) at the Program Evaluation and Research Branch of the Los Angeles Unified School District
2003-2004Adjunct Instructor, French and Italian and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
2003Los Angeles Teaching Fellow, Los Angles Unified School District
1993-2002Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Humanities, University of Colorado,Boulder
1993Participant, Visiting Artists' Lecture Series, California Institute of the Arts
1985-1986Part-time lecturer in English, SACHED (South African Council of Higher Education) Program, Johannesburg, South Africa (under the auspices of Bishop Desmond Tutu)
LANGUAGES
French, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Courses Taught at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles:
Decadence and Modernity, The Apocalypse in Literature, Culture, and the Arts, Telling Animals, Themes and Motifs in Comparative Literature: The Apocalypse; The Apocalypse in Literature, Film, and the Arts; Telling Animals; Comics and Graphic Novels; Representation and Cognition in Photography; Modern Literary Criticism and Theory; Introduction to Literary Theory; Utopias; Victorian Literature; American Literature; Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism; Literature, Gender, Theory; On Location: The Place of Literature in Global Culture; Literature, Technology, and Desire; The Modernist Novel; The Critical Image; Science Fiction; Women in British and American Writing After 1800; British and American Literature After 1800; Contemporary French Thought; Literature and Popular Culture: The Comic Book; South African Women’s Self-Writing; French-American Cultural Relations
Student Supervision and Advisement since Fall 2012:
I have directed 6 Comparative Literature honors theses, 9 Narrative Studies Capstone projects, and have served on 3 graduate committees for Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture.
Courses Taught at University of Colorado at Boulder:
Courses include: Decadence; Narrative and the Arts (Word-Image Relations in Painting and Film); Queer Pop Culture; Fairy Tales and Narratology; Transsexuality and Film; Virtual Fictions; South African Women’s Writing; Modernism, Sex, and Gender; Introduction to Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Studies; Theories of Spectatorship
Thesis and Dissertation Direction and Supervision at the University of Colorado at Boulder:
Primary director of 12 undergraduate senior honors theses, 4 M.A. theses, and 3 Ph.D. dissertations; reader on the committees of 18 undergraduate senior honors theses, 2 M.A. theses, and 10 Ph.D. dissertations
(A full list of courses taught and student work directed and supervised is available upon request.)
PUBLICATIONS
BOOK
The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker. Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2012.
Reviews:
Analysis:
Brenna Lee. “Radical Objects.” Something on Paper. Issue 2, 2014.
INTERVIEW
With Janice Lee. Entropy. 24 March 2014.
TRANSCRIBED GRADUATE SEMINAR AND WORKSHOP
“Space in Writing.” Something on Paper. Issue 2, 2014.
EDITED COLLECTIONS
With Richard Block. “Betrayal.” An issue devoted to the topic of betrayal. New Centennial Review. 12. 3 (Winter 2012).
ARTICLES
With Richard Block. “A Treacherous Subject: An Introduction.” In “Betrayal.” An issue devoted to the topic of betrayal. New Centennial Review. 12.3 (Winter 2012): 1-17.
“Robert Fuest and The Final Programme: Science Fiction and the Question of Style.” In British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays. James Leggott and Thomas Hochscherf, eds. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press, 2011. 60-72.
“‘Goth Damage’ and Melancholia: Reflections on Posthuman Gothic Identities.” InGoth: Undead Subculture. Michael Bibby and Lauren Goodlad, eds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 155-168.
“Narrative as Determination of the Future Anterior.” In Biting the Error: Writers ExploreNarrative. Mary Burger, Robert Glück, Camille Roy, and Gail Scott, eds. Toronto, Ontario: Coach House Books, 2004. 262-265.
(Reprint of: “Narrative as Determination of the Future Anterior.” Narrativity 3 (2002):
“Unspeakable Writing: Jean Lorrain's Monsieur de Phocas.” French Forum 27.2 (2002): 65-98.
With Kathleen Chapman. “Don't Call Me Girl: Lesbian Theory, Feminist Theory, and Transsexual Identities.” In Cross-Purposes: Lesbians, Feminists, and the Limits of Alliance. Dana Heller, ed. Bloomington: IndianUniversity Press, 1997. 169-187.
With Kathleen Chapman. “Queercore: The Distinct Identities of Subculture.” College Literature 24.1 (1997): 45-58.
“Blatantly Bisexual, or, Unthinking Queer Theory.” In RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire. Donald E. Hall and Maria Pramaggiore, eds. New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1996. 19-54.
“Mother's Boys: Maternity, Male ‘Homosexuality,’ Melancholia.” Discourse 16.1 (1993): 145-174.
“An Open and Shut Case: Secret Beyond the Door.” Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism 10.2 (1990): 58-77.
“The Postmodern Object: Commodities, Fetishes, and Signifiers in Donald Barthelme's Writings.” Journal of Literary Studies 4.4 (1988): 443-458.
“Bodies and Signs: Inscriptions of Femininity in John Coetzee and Wilma Stockenstrom.” Journal of Literary Studies 4.1 (1988): 118-128.
“Space, Story, and History: ReadingGoldReefCity.” English Studies in Africa: A Journal of the Humanities 30 (1987): 105-112.
REVIEW ARTICLES
“The Terrors of Governmentality: The Crazies.” Review of The Crazies, dir. by Breck Eisner. In Jura Gentium Cinema: Cinema and Globalization. August 2010.
Review of Marianna Torgovnick, The War Complex: World War II in Our Time. Oxford Literary Review. 31.2(2009): 249-255.
“Fantasies of the Institution: The films of Georges Franju and Kate Ince’s Georges Franju.” Review of Georges Franju by Kate Ince. Film-Philosophy 11. 3 (2007): 94-102.
“Nostalgia for a Homogenous Gay Masculinity.” Review of Facing It: AIDS Diaries and the Death of the Author by Ross Chambers, A Small Boy and Others: Imitation and Initiation in American Culture from Henry James to Andy Warhol by Michael Moon, and Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945-1995 by Reed Woodhouse. Modern Fiction Studies 46.2 (2000): 500-512.
Review of Incidents by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard, and Bringing Out Roland Barthes by D.A. Miller. Discourse 16.1 (1993): 174-179.
“Critics, Cross-Dressers, and Outlaws.” Review of Men in Feminism, ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. Journal of Literary Studies 4.2 (1988): 231-237.
“Figuring (Out) Lacan.” Review of Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious by Juliet Flower MacCannell. Journal of Literary Studies. 3.4 (1987): 94-103.
REVIEWS
“Crisscrossing Genders.” Review of Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions, ed. Naomi Tucker. American Book Review 18.1 (1996): 21.
“Against Culture.” Review of Encyclopaedia Acephalia by Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris, et al. American Book Review 17.3 (1996): 11.
Review of “Am I That Name?” Feminism and the Category of “Women” by Denise Riley. Philosophy and Literature 14.2 (1990): 432-433.
Review of The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, and Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine by Naomi Schor. Journal of Literary Studies 4.3 (1988): 342-346.
CREATIVE WORK
In progress:
The Land of Afterwards: Retellings. A collection of short stories, prose poems, word-image texts, and poems that draw on fairy tales, the Gothic, and opera to explore belatedness, obsolescence, and extinction. Ongoing, planning on submitting it to publishers in early 2016.
With Janice Lee. Decapitation: Poems. Ongoing, planning on submitting our manuscript to publishers during the spring of 2017.
Published:
With Janice Lee. “Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to the Land of Hades.” In Angel City Review. Volume 3. California: Los Angeles, July 16, 2016. 14-16.
“72-hour Hold.” In Fanzine 23.06.2015.
With Janice Lee. “From A Book of Decapitations.” P-Queue. “Fatality” Issue. Buffalo, NY: SUNY, Buffalo, 2015. 43-57.
With Janice Lee. “Land of the Dead, 2005,” and “Blades of Blood, 2010.” Faultline. Volume 24. Irvine: University of California, Irvine, 2015. 46-48.
“On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature by Gilles Deleuze.” In hurry please its [sic] time. Edited by Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place. Los Angeles: Les Figues, 2015. 301-306. Anthologized and reprinted from 2012.
“The Jeweler.” In Your Impossible Voice. Issue 4. Summer 2014.
Reading of “The Jeweler” in a video directed by Frank Forte.
With Janice Lee. “Three Decapitations”: “Byzantium 2013,” “The Omen 1976,” and “The Devil’s Possessed 1974” in Plinth, Issue 1.
With Janice Lee. “Three Poems”: “Izo,” “Chicken Run,” and “Underworld” in Fanzine 29.11.13.
“Someone like Morella.” Poem. In Natbrut, Issue 1.
“On the Superiority of Anglo–American Literature by Gilles Deleuze.” Artist’s statement. In Trench Art: Surplus. Los Angeles, Les Figues Press, 2012. 7-12.
“Ergernis.” Afrikaans translation of Baudelaire’s “Spleen,” LXXX, from Les fleurs du mal. In LitNet. 26 April 2011.
“Humeurigheid.” Afrikaans translation of Baudelaire’s “Spleen,” LXXVIII, from Les fleurs du mal. In LitNet. 26 April 2011.
“Neerslagtigheid.” Afrikaans translation of Baudelaire’s “Spleen,” LXXIX, from Les fleurs du mal. In LitNet. 26 April 2011.
“The Carpet out of Time.” In The &Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing. Robert Archambeau, Davis Schneiderman, and Steve Tomasula, eds. Lake Forest, Illinois: Lake Forest College Press, 2009. 127-128.
“Hormones, Germs, and Cancer (This Is Not an Autobiography).” Narrativity 3 (2002):
“In the Thirty-Second Year of the War.” In Forces' Favourites (a collection of anti-war protest writing from South Africa). Pretoria: Taurus, 1987. 39-42.
READINGS,PERFORMANCES, AND INSTALLATION
With Janice Lee. “Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to the Land of Hades.” Angel City Review, Volume 3 reading and launch, Moryork Gallery, Los Angeles, July 8, 2016.
“Venus and the Cat” and “Lament for a Lost Familiar.” Off-site panel featuring small presses, Les Figues, Insert Blanc and 1913. American Writers and Writing Programs Conference. 2 April, 2016.
“Carrion Literature.” Panel organized by Les Figues, with Ron Athey, Raquel Roberts, and Margaret Rhee. “WeHo Reads Banned Books.”Organized by the City of West Hollywood, City of West Hollywood Public Library, 26 September 2015.
With Janice Lee. From the decapitation project. Faultline launch, University of California at Irvine, 10 June, 2015.
Reading. DTLAB, organized by Writ Large Press, Traxx Restaurant, Union Station, with Christine Wertheim and Matthew Timmons, 19 August, 2014.
With Janice Lee. From the decapitation project. Event on “Collaboration,” hosted by Will Alexander, Beyond Baroque, Venice, 19 April 2014.
The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker. Reading, Rhapsodomancy Reading Series, curated by Wendy Ortiz, Good Luck Bar, 11 August, 2013.
The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker. Reading, What Where Series, Naropa University, Boulder, 29 October 2013.
“Five Afrikaans Recipes for Tongue.” Reading as part of LitCrawl LA: NOHO 2013, North Hollywood Arts Council, Los Angeles, 13 October, 2013.
With Janice Lee. From the decapitation project. “TRAUM UND TRAUMA!” A Poetic Research Bureau Group Reading, Los Angeles, 5 October 2013.
Reading. “Not I: Collaboration and Constraint.” Les Figues Press, with publishers Vanessa Place and Teresa Carmody, as well as Les Figues authors Jen Hofer, and Doug Nufer, Counterpath Press, Denver, 13 April 2013.
Video of reading at:
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The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker. Reading. With AnaBožičević. Poetic Research Bureau, Los Angeles, 16 February 2013.
“The Porcelain Book.” Performance and reading. 6th Annual Les Figues Benefit Auction at Human Resources, Los Angeles, 7 October 2012.
The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker. Reading. Les Figues Annual Garden Party, 20 June 2012.
“Unhomeland.” Performance. Part of the panel, “Deranged Geographies.” &NOW Festival of New Writing 2011, Tomorrowland Forever!, University of California at San Diego, 14 October 2011.
“If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now.” Performance. Part of the panel, “If Tomorrowland Is Forever, Them, If I Lived There, Would I Be Home Now?”, &NOW Festival of New Writing 2011, “Tomorrowland Forever!,” University of California at San Diego, 15 October 2011.
“Endnotes from ‘The Twitch of a Tablescape (A Comedy of Manners).’” Reading. Part of “Both Sides and Center,” a literary-artistic event curated by Amina Cain and Teresa Carmody at the R. M. Schindler House, under the auspices of MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst), Vienna, and funded by a Cultural ResourceDevelopment Grant from the City of West Hollywood and by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation, 19 August 2011.
“The Twitch of a Tablescape (A Comedy of Manners).” Durational performance. Part of “Both Sides and Center,” a literary-artistic event curated by Amina Cain and Teresa Carmody at the R. M. Schindler House, under the auspices of MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst), Vienna, and funded by a Cultural ResourceDevelopment Grant from the City of West Hollywood and by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation, 20 August 2011.
“Both Sides and Center.” Roundtable discussion with Teresa Carmody, Amina Cain, Simon Leung, Connie Samaras, Jen Hoffer, et al. Part of “Both Sides and Center,” a literary-artistic event curated by Amina Cain and Teresa Carmody at the Leland-Fiztpatrick House, under the auspices of MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst), Vienna, and funded by a Cultural ResourceDevelopment Grant from the City of West Hollywood and by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation, 21 August 2011.
Review:
1,000 Points of Light. Installation. WITNESS: Veteran Activists Remember ACT UP/LA , Highways Gallery, Santa Monica, 30 November 2007--January 31, 2008.
SELECTED PUBLIC TALKS
“Writing Walking,” seminar with graduate students of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University (29 October 2013)
“What Matters,” formal discussion with Vanessa Place, Lincoln Tobier, and Brian Teare, in the series “Q.E.D.: A Short Series of Long Conversations on Queer Art and Literature,” at the Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK) Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, supported by a Cultural Resource Development Grant from the City of West Hollywood (9 May 2012)
“Life after Postmodernism, or Altermodernity.” Talk by invitation of the Philosophy Club at the University of Southern California (16 October 2011)
“‘Towards the 21st-Century Novel of Adultery: Notes on Marriage as Insistent Narrative Failure,” presented as part of the panel, “Glorious Failure: Writing in the Absence of Mastery, at the conference “&Now: A Conference of Innovative Writing and the Literary Arts,” State University of New York, Buffalo (sponsor) (17 October 2009)
“‘Electrical Scheherazade’: Occult Networking and the Fin-de-Siècle,” presented as part of the panel, “Wired: Transmissions, Telecommunications and the Expanding Spaces of the Modern,” at the conference “Modernism and Global Media,” Modernist Studies Association 10, Vanderbilt University (sponsor) (15 November 2008)
“Cashing in on Death: Franchising ‘Snuff’ for Late Capitalism,” presented as part of the panel, “Cinema/Life/Money: Reading Cinema in the Era of Biocapital” at the conference, “Arrivals and Departures,” American Comparative Literature Association, Long Beach (25 April 2008)
“Propping Up Fiction,” presented as part of the panel, “Dysfunctional Fictions,” at the conference, “&NOW 2008: A Festival of Innovative Literature and Art,” Chapman University (17 April 2008)
“Hand-Painted Mass Reproductions from the Dream of Modernist Capital: Winsor McCay in Slumberland,” presented as part of the panel, “Translating Visual Styles: The Transformation and Displacement of Boundaries in the Visual Arts, 1900-1930,” at the conference, “Geographies of Visual and Literary Culture,” Modernist Studies Association 9, California State University, Long Beach and University of Southern California (sponsors) (2 November 2007)
“Decadent Commodities and Narrative Objects in Gustav Meyrink’s ‘Strange Tales’ (Sonderbare Geschichten),” presented as part of the panel, “History and Modernity,” at the conference “‘A Leap from the Temple of Culture into the Abyss’: Decadence in Central and Eastern Europe,” The Harriman Institute, Columbia University (16 March 2007)
“Surveying The Conversation,” presented as part of programmed events related to the exhibition, Transfictions: Jack Butler, Eileen Cowin, Grant Mudford, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California (8 April 2004)
“Narrating Urban Space in Blow Up,” presented as part of programmed events related to the exhibition, Transfictions: Jack Butler, Eileen Cowin, Grant Mudford, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California (1 April 2004)
“‘Unearthly’: Virtuality and Empire in Women’s Postcolonial Writing,” presented at the Center for Feminist Research, University of Southern California (24 March 2004)
“Sex Change Shocker,” presented as part of the panel “Performing Genders,” Ladyfest Annual Convention, Los Angeles (10 November 2002)
“Pronouns, Genders, and Utopias (‘To the Third’),” presented as part of the panel, “Feminism and Identity,” Naropa Summer Writing Program, NaropaUniversity (19 June 2002)
INVITED LECTURES
“Walking Writing.” Naropa University. 29 October 2013.
“The Indifferent Vampire, Or, How Bloodsucking Lost Its Bite,” Second Annual Vampire Lecture, University of California, Irvine, (30 October 2004)
“Cinéfantastique and Lesbian Vampires,”University of California, Irvine (30 October 2003)
“The Idiot According to Akira Kurosawa,”University of California,Irvine (8 May 2003)
“Flat Like Sex, Flat Like Gender,” Naropa Summer Program, Naropa University, Boulder (28 June 2001)
“Psychotextuality: The Discursive Contexts of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho,”University of Southern California (30 May 1999)
PANEL ORGANIZATION
“If Tomorrowland Is Forever, Them, If I Lived There, Would I Be Home Now?”, at the &NOW Festival of New Writing 2011, Tomorrowland Forever!, University of California at San Diego (sponsor) (14 October 2012)
“Wired: Transmissions, Telecommunications and the Expanding Spaces of the Modern,” at the conference “Modernism and Global Media,” Modernist Studies Association 10, Vanderbilt University (sponsor) (15 November 2008)
“Translating Visual Styles: The Transformation and Displacement of Boundaries in the Visual Arts, 1900-1930,” at the conference, “Geographies of Visual and Literary Culture,” Modernist Studies Association 9, California State University, Long Beach and University of Southern California (sponsors) (2 November 2007)
AWARDS AND GRANTS
Graduate Council on Arts and Humanities, University of Colorado at Boulder, for research on nation, class, race, gender, and sexuality in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, 1998
TEACHING RECOGNITION