Curriculum vitae

Derek S. McGrath

PhD, English Literature

he/him/his

derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com

https://www.dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com

Linked In

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4812-7388

EDUCATION                       

PhD, English, 2014
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
Dissertation: “American Masculinity and Home in Antebellum Literature”
Advisor: Susan Scheckel

BA with honors, Liberal Arts (English concentration), 2007
Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL
Honors thesis: ” ‘Is the world, then, so narrow?’ The Simultaneous Need for Home and Travel in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter“

DISSERTATION

This study critically assesses a range of 19th-century authors who defined models of masculinity by building upon, rather than only dismantling, prevalent domestic ideology before the Civil War: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sojourner Truth, George Copway, and Mark Twain. This study traces the permeable boundary between the supposedly masculine public and supposedly feminine private spheres to identify the opportunities and challenges that the home provided to United States writers, men and women, and across the spectrums of race, class, region, and religion. 

RESEARCH INTERESTS AND TEACHING SPECIALIZATION

Early to 21st-century American literature and popular culture. Gender studies. LGBTQ studies. African American literature. Native American literature. Digital humanities, new media, and multimedia and online rhetoric and pedagogy. Visual and material culture. Comic books, graphic novels, and animation, including manga and anime. Disability studies. Music and poetry. Writing and rhetoric.

PUBLICATIONS

Book Chapters

2019: “Reading Right to Left: Teaching Manga in the Classroom, at Fan Conventions, and Online.” Lessons Drawn: Essays on the Pedagogy of Comics and Graphic Novels. Ed. David Seelow. Jefferson: McFarland

2015: “Teaching Bad Romance: Poe’s Women, the Gothic, and Lady Gaga.” Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction and the Pleasures and Perils of the Classroom. Ed. Janet Casey. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press

2015: “Some Assembly Required: Joss Whedon’s Indecisive Gendering in Marvel Films’ The Avengers.” Screening Images of Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism. Ed. Elizabeth Abele and John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco. Lanham: Lexington Books

Reviews

2021: Review of EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest, by Qiana Whitted, and Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement: Reframing History in Comics, by Jorge J. Santos Jr, African American Review 54.3 (Fall 2021)

Selected Web-Based Publications

Literary and Cultural Analysis

2021: “The Hawk at His Nest: Domestic Masculinity and Marvel Comics’s Hawkeye.”

Professional Development

2021: “What If It Doesn’t Fit on My CV?”

2017: “Packing for a Convention.”

2016: “Good Luck on the Job Search!”

2016: “Proposing a Session or Roundtable at a Conference.”

2014: “Preparing for Your Conference: For Presentations in Literature, Language, and the Humanities.”

2014: “Writing Your Abstract for Conferences in Literature, Language, and the Humanities.”

AWARDS

2014: Marilyn and Ira Hechler Endowment Award, Stony Brook University. For successful defense of a noteworthy dissertation that contributes to the department and a better understanding of literary analysis

2010: Meyer Graduate Award, Stony Brook University. For exceptional academic service as scholar, instructor, and mentor in the English Department

2007-2013: Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Stony Brook University

2007: Outstanding Award for Undergraduate Thesis, Florida Atlantic University

INVITED PRESENTATIONS

2016: New York University. Showcase at the Poe Room. Manhattan, New York. December 2. Attendance: 100

2012: “Bad Romance: Teaching Poe’s Women with Lady Gaga.” New York University. Showcase at the Poe Room. Manhattan, New York. March 21. Attendance: 100

SELECTED CONFERENCES

Webinars

2021: “Supporting All Learners.” Manga in Libraries, sponsored by the New York City School Librarians’ Association and the Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table. September 10 and 24.

Panels Organized

2019: “International Poe.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 21 to 24

2018: “New Approaches in Zombie Studies.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2018: “Edgar Allan Poe and Race.” Sponsored by the Poe Studies Association. Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2018: “Teaching Anime and Manga.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2018: “Whitewashing and Racebending: Diversity in Literature and Popular Culture.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2018: “From CFP to Publication: Developing a Successful Conference Panel.” Modern Language Association. January 4 to 7

2017: “The Pop Culture Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 23 to 26

2017: “Superhero Narratives and (Dis)Ability.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 23 to 26

2016: “ ‘Ruined!’ On Failed Adaptations from Page to Screen.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 17 to 20

2016: “The Marvel Cinematic Universe as Literature.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 17 to 20

2016: “Developments in Comics Pedagogy.” Modern Language Association. January 7 to 10

2015: “Comedy and Comics: Parody, Satire, and Humor in Superhero Narratives.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 30 to May 3

2014: “Can The Subaltern Be A Superhero? The Politics of Non-Hegemonic Superheroism.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 3 to 6

2013: “Show and Tell: A Roundtable of Comic Book and Graphic Novel Creators.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 21 to 24

2013: “Panels and Pedagogy: Teaching the Graphic Novel.”
Northeast Modern Language Association. March 21 to 24

2012: “Masculinity in Superhero Comic Books and Films.”
Northeast Modern Language Association. A session of the Women’s and Gender Studies Caucus. March 15 to 18

Papers Presented

2019: “Fanfiction and Neurodiversity in the Classroom.” Northeast Modern Language Association. March 21 to 24

2018: “Edgar Allan Poe’s Last Publications in the Abolitionist Newspaper Flag of Our Union.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2018: “Rewriting Old Tales: Transformative Potentials for Loki, Marvel’s God of Lies and Stories.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 12 to 15

2017: “ ‘Ha Ha! Boring’: Nostalgia and Melancholia in Servamp and Anime Fan Communities.” Anime and Manga Studies Symposium at Anime Expo. July 1 to 4

2016: “Dudes Need Blush Stickers, Too: Incorporating Anime and Manga into Gender Studies Courses.” Anime and Manga Studies Symposium at Anime Expo. July 1 to 4

2015: “Reading Right to Left: Teaching Manga in the Classroom, at Fan Conventions, and Online.” Illustration, Comics, and Animation Conference at Dartmouth College. May 8 to 10

2015: “For the LOLz: Comedic Reinterpretations of the Superhero in Online Fan Communities.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 30 to May 3

2015: “Detecting the Complementary Poles of Sentiment and Sensation in Poe’s ‘The Oblong Box.’” Poe Studies Association International Conference. February 26 to March 1

2015: “Can My Dissertation Just Be On Fandom? Pursuing a PhD in American Literature While Watching Too Much Anime.” Modern Language Association. January 8 to 11

2014: “Sojourner Truth’s Household Lessons and Domestic Activism at Freedman’s Village.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 3 to 6

2013: “Boyish, Feeble, and Altogether Deficient: Hawthorne and Poe’s Publications for Godey’s Lady’s Book.” Modern Language Association. A joint special session of the Hawthorne Society and the Poe Society. January 9 to 12

2013: “ ‘To the Fireside of the Paleface’: Boston and Domesticity in Copway’s Running Sketches of Men and Places.” Modern Language Association. A special session of the Indigenous Literature Society. January 9 to 12

2012: “The Question Before the House: Sojourner Truth’s Public Home.”
Underground Railroad Conference. April 17 to 19

2011: “Ante- and Postbellum Sarcasm as Indicator for Men’s Emotional Orientation in Poe and Twain.” Northeast Modern Language Association. April 7 to 10

2009: “ ‘Shrinking from My Father’: Disguises and Dickens’s Darwinism in Our Mutual Friend.” Modern Language Association. December 27 to 30

2009: “Definitions of Home in Terms of Immobility and Movement in
Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative.” Northeast American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. November 5 to 8

2009: “ ‘So It Was Just a Story’: DNA as Insufficient Narrative in Gates’s African American Lives.” Northeast Modern Language Association.
February 26 to March 1

2007: “ ‘Is The World, Then, So Narrow?’ Hawthorne’s Simultaneous Need for Home and Travel.’” Modern Language Association. December 27 to 30

2006: “A Distorted Midwest: A Comparison to the Valley of Ashes in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.” National Undergraduate Literature Conference.
March 30 to April 1

Seminars

2013: “Domestic Impressions: The Visual and Material Culture of the American Family Home, 1750-1890.” American Antiquarian Society. The Center for Historic American Visual Culture. July 7 to 12

Campus and Departmental Talks

2011: Conference presentation workshop. Stony Brook University. November 14

2010: Graduate student orientation workshop. Stony Brook University. August 26

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT

2013-2021: Northeast Modern Language Association, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY

• Marketing Coordinator (2013-2020)
• Webmaster/Social Media Manager (2016-2021)
• Administrative Coordinator (2016-2021)

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Buffalo State University

College Writing I (Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018)

University at Buffalo

Introductory Writing and Rhetoric (Fall 2018)

Literary Criticism (Spring 2017)

Broward College

Composition I (Fall 2014, five sections)

Stony Brook University

Literature

Major American Writers: Edgar Allan Poe (Upper-division, Summer 2010, Summer 2012)

Literary Analysis and Argumentation (English major foundation course, Spring 2011, Fall 2011)

American Literature I: 1607 to 1865 (Survey course, Summer 2011)

American Literature II: 1865 to 1914 (Survey course, Summer 2011)

Literary Representations of the Human Body (Summer 2010)

Gender and Domesticity in the American Romance (Fall 2010)

Writing

Introductory Writing (Fall 2008)

Intermediate Writing (Spring 2009, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012)

Teaching Assistant (Designed and sole-taught some class sessions)

American Literature I: 1607 to 1865 (Fall 2009)

American Literature II: 1865 to 1945 (Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2010)

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

2012-2013: Editorial assistant to Elizabeth Abele, Nassau Community College, Home Front Heroes: The Rise of a New Hollywood Archetype, 1988-1999 (McFarland, 2014). Edited content, conducted search of recent publications to complete research review, and cleared legal rights for reproduction of all movie stills and other images.

2008-2013: Research assistant, Susan Scheckel, Stony Brook University. Catalogued research on antebellum medical conditions of nostalgia and melancholia as related to slave narratives, and catalogued issues of postbellum Native American photographic newsletters including The Southern Workman at the Hampton Institute and The Red Man at the Carlisle School.

UNIVERSITY SERVICE

2012: Stony Brook University Safe Space LGBTQ+ program

2009-2011: Graduate student union representative, Stony Brook University

2009-2010: Treasurer, English Graduate Conference, Stony Brook University

2008-2010: Senator, Graduate Student Organization, Stony Brook University

2008-2009: Graduate liaison to English department faculty, Stony Brook University

2006-2007: Volunteer note-taker and test proxy, Florida Atlantic University’s Office for Students with Disabilities

TECHNOLOGICAL, ONLINE, AND DIGITAL PUBLISHING PROFICIENCY

Learning Management Systems

Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, Desire2Learn, Digication, Eli Review

Publishing Layout and Design

Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXpress, Scribus

Photograph and Digital Art (GIF Creation, Image Editing)

Adobe PhotoShop, Paint Shop ProSelect, GNU Image Manipulation Program

Video Editing and Publishing

Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut, Avid Editor, iMovie

Microsoft Office

Word (including mail merge), Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access

Google Apps

Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Analytics

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platforms

Ballast/CFP List, Whova, EventMobi

Web Site Design

Adobe CQ5: Advanced knowledge

HTML/CSS technologies: Intermediate knowledge

Java: Intermediate knowledge

Example Web Designs

Edgar Allan Poe course

Composition course

LANGUAGES

Spanish: Conversational fluency, excellent reading knowledge, good writing ability

French: Good conversational ability, good reading knowledge, can write with a dictionary

Japanese: Can read with a dictionary

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

2009-2021: Northeast Modern Language Association

2007-2018: Modern Language Association

2014-2015: Nathaniel Hawthorne Society

2014-2015: Poe Studies Association

2014-2015: Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association

REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST