Rachel Trousdale Professor of English Framingham State University 100 State Street PO Box 9101 Framingham, MA 01701-9101 Email: rachelvtrousdale at gmail.com

• 100-level and First-Year Seminars: Alternate Histories [Syllabus]; Narratives of Captivity and Escape [Syllabus]
• 200-level: Developments in the Novel [Syllabus]; Lyric Poetry [Syllabus]; British Literature Since 1800 [Syllabus]; Introduction to Poetry Writing [Syllabus]
• 300-level: Modern Poetry [Syllabus]; The Modern British Novel [Syllabus]; Virginia Woolf and Modernism [Syllabus]; Postmodern Fiction [Syllabus]; Romantic Poetry [Syllabus]; 19th Century British Poetry [Syllabus]; Poetry Workshop [Syllabus]
• 400-level: Senior Seminar in Literature [Syllabus]

Research

Books



Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.





Humor in Modern American Poetry, an edited collection with contributions by Stephanie Burt, Marta Figlerowicz, Hugh Haughton, Lena Hill, Megan Leroy, Karin Roffman, Alan Shapiro, Joel Slotkin, and William Solomon. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Click here to see the table of contents or read the introduction.





Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination: Novels of Exile and Alternate Worlds. New York: Palgrave, 2010. Click here for a review from Twentieth Century Literature 58: 2 (2012): 355-364.


Selected Articles


• "Teaching Comic Narratives." Teaching Narrative. Ed. Richard Jacobs. London: Palgrave, 2018, 71-85.
• "Humor and Community in Auden's Late-Thirties Poetry." Humor in Modern American Poetry, ed. Rachel Trousdale. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, 153-173.
• "Salman Rushdie and Islamophobia." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature Prepublished March 30, 2017.
• Round Table with Priscilla Meyer, Will Norman, and Dale E. Peterson, moderated by Yuri Leving, "Approaches to Teaching Nabokov's Pale Fire." Nabokov Online Journal Volume 9 (2015).
• "Panthers and Jaguars: Realism and Responsibility in Salman Rushdie's Shame." Critical Insights: Magical Realism, ed. Ignacio Lopez-Calvo. Armenia, NY: Gray House Publishing, 2014, 178-192.
• "Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov." Co-written with Priscilla Meyer. Comparative Literature Studies 50: 3 (2013): 490-522.
• "A Female Prophet? Female Authority and Memory in Marjane Satrapi." Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art, ed. Jane Tolmie. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2013, 241-263.
• "'Humor Saves Steps': Laughter and Humanity in Marianne Moore". The Journal of Modern Literature 35: 3 (2012): 121-138.
• "Nabokov and the Transnational Canon." The Nabokovian 66 (Spring 2011): 7-14.
• "Chabon, Nabokov, and the Model Transnational." Transitional Nabokov, ed. Duncan White and Will Norman. London: Peter Lang UK, 2009, 99-114.
• "Incest and Intertext: Mansfield Park in Ada." The Nabokovian 61 (Fall 2008): 48-52
• "Hybridity and the Artist in Out of Africa" in On the Road to Baghdad, or, Traveling Biculturalism, ed. Gonul Pultar. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2005, 169-190.
• "City of Mongrel Joy: Bombay in Rushdie's Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39:2 (2004): 95-110.
• "Faragod Bless Them: Anna Karenin and Electricity in Ada." Nabokov Studies 7 (2003): 119-128.
• "Self-Invention in Isak Dinesen's 'The Flood at Norderney.'" Scandinavian Studies, Volume 74 No, 2 (2002): 205-222. Reprinted in Short Story Criticism, Volume 75 (2004) and Twentieth Century Literature Criticism, Volume 255 (2011).
• "Transformations of Memory: Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Merrill" in Nabokov's World, ed. Jane Grayson, Arnold B. McMillin, and Priscilla Meyer, Macmillan, 2002, 192-203.
• Recent and forthcoming book reviews in The Yale Review, The Harvard Review Online, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Twentieth Century Literature, South Central Review, Woolf Studies Annual, Studies in American Humor, and The Slavonic and East European Review.

Current Projects


• The Joking Voice: Humor and Empathy in Twentieth-Century Poetry
• "Witches Against War: Dubravka Ugresic, Umberto Eco, and the Transnational Imaginary"
• Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem, a book of poems

Poetry

Chapbook



Antiphonal Fugue For Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone, Finishing Line Press, 2015. Click here to read about the chapbook in an interview with Nancy Chen Long, or here for an interview at The Chapbook Interview.



• Two poems at Split Rock Review.
• Optics Lab. at Psaltery and Lyre.
• The Second Baby Explains the Unthinkable at The Nation
• The Reef at The Yale Review.
• Young Peggy Plays Taps. Literary Imagination (2012) 14(3): 352.
• Five poems and an interview at Connotation Press.
• An audio recording, courtesy of Rhino, of me reading "Learning Swahili", along with a recording of my translation of the poem into Kiswahili, read by Brian Macharia.
• Three poems at Two Serious Ladies.
• A little humor piece: FAQ About My Long-Distance Academic Marriage at The Toast.
• My poems have also appeared in The Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, Light, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Parts of the Whole: Poetry of the Body, Natural Bridge, Sou'wester, The Southern Poetry Anthology, So Little Time, you are here, Confrontation, and Pocket Field Guide, among other places.
  

Videos

• "Humor Saves Steps: Laughter and Fellow-Feeling in Modern Poetry," delivered as part of Agnes Scott College's ACME lecture series, September 6, 2011. This lecture is an overview of some of my current research.
• "An Imaginary Poet", delivered as part of Agnes Scott College's "Last Lecture" series, February 10, 2009; this piece is somewhere between literary criticism and performance art.
• A discussion of Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir Persepolis, featuring students who asked for and designed an independent study in graphic novels in the spring of 2008. This discussion was distributed to incoming first-year students the following fall as part of Agnes Scott College's first-year common reading program.

Recent and Upcoming Events

• "Cathy Park Hong's Games of Context." MLA 2018, January 2018, New York, NY.
• "Elizabeth Bishop's Comedy of Self-Revelation." Elizabeth Bishop's Questions of Travel 50 Years Later, June 25, 2015, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
• "Humor in Modern Poetry" panel at MLA 2015, January 2015, Vancouver, BC.
• "Looking Up at the Stars: W. H. Auden's Astronomical Perspectives." MSA 2014, November 2014, Pittsburgh, PA.
• "'Shocked at my Levity': Pound's Humor in the Pisan Cantos." ALA Symposium on American Poetry. October 24, 2014.
• Poetry reading with Lori Desrosiers, Ellen Goldstein, and Joy Ladin. Massachusetts Poetry Festival. May 4, 2014. Library Room, Hawthorne Hotel, Salem, MA.
• "Salman Rushdie and Islamophobia." MLA 2014, January 2014, Chicago, IL.
• "Witches Against War: Dubravka Ugresic's Baba Yaga International." MLA 2014, January 2014, Chicago, IL.
• "Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf." Collaborative presentation with Priscilla Meyer. Nabokov Readings, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia, July 4-5, 2013, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
• "Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf." Collaborative presentation with Priscilla Meyer. April 5, 2013, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
• "Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf." Collaborative presentation with Priscilla Meyer. AATSEEL 2013, Boston, MA.
• "Witches Against War: Dubravka Ugresic and Umberto Eco." Keynote, University of Georgia Department of Comparative Literature's 2012 Graduate Conference, "Evaluating Transnationalism," March 24, 2012
• "Marianne Moore's Empathetic Satire." MLA 2012, Seattle, WA.
• "The Joking Voice: Humor and Intimacy in Elizabeth Bishop's Poetry." SAMLA 2011, Atlanta, GA.
• "Humor Saves Steps: Laughter and Fellow-Feeling in Modern Poetry." ACME Lecture Series, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, September 6, 2011
• "A Female Prophet? Female Authority and Memory in Marjane Satrapi." MLA 2011, Los Angeles, CA.
• "Nabokov and the Transnational Canon." MLA 2011, Los Angeles, CA.
• "Derek Walcott and Postcolonial Poetics." University of West GA, Carrollton, GA, November 30, 2009.
• "'Tell me the Truth': Humor and Humanism in Auden." Modernist Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, November 9, 2009.

Education

• Ph.D. (2002) Yale University
• M. Phil. (1998) Yale University
• M.A. (1997) Yale University
• B.A. (1996) Yale University

• Curriculum Vitae (pdf)