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Milton
J. Bates
Professor
My teaching and research focus on three areas of American literary expression: modernism, the Vietnam War, and the American landscape. Though I find in literature the most satisfying and meaningful treatment of these topics, I draw freely on other disciplines, especially history, and other media, particularly the visual arts and film.
Among the modernist writers whom I teach regularly are Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Richard Wright, and William Carlos Williams.
My approach to the second area, the Vietnam War, combines cultural studies with narrative theory, as suggested by the title of my book The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling. The Library of America's two-volume Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1975, which I helped to edit, has proved a useful resource for my own course on the war and similar courses at other colleges and universities.
My third area of interest, literary responses to the American landscape, serves as a point of departure for the study of American intellectual history, contemporary environmental issues, the emerging field of ecocriticism, and creative nonfiction as a genre. Besides teaching a course on this subject, I am writing a work of nonfiction about a river valley near Milwaukee. Excerpts from the book have appeared in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Teaching Fields
- American Literature
- Literature and the Environment
- Vietnam War Literature
Office
Location & Contact
Office
Hours
- Spring 2008
- TUTH 12:45-2:15
Teaching
Schedule
- Spring 2008
- 033/1006 TUTH 9:35-10:50
- 255/1001 TUTH 11:00-12:15
Research Interests
- Wallace Stevens
- Vietnam War Literature
- American Landscape Writing
Selected Publications
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Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self. University of California Press, 1985. Spanish translation, Fraterna, 1989. Recognition: New York Times Notable Book of 1985; Outstanding Achievement in Literature, Wisconsin Library Association.
- Opus Posthumous, by Wallace Stevens. Revised, enlarged, and corrected edition. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Faber, 1990. Vintage-Random paperback, 1990.
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Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujects: Wallace Stevens’ Commonplace Book. Stanford University Press and the Huntington Library, 1989. Facsimile edition with transcription, introduction, and notes.
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The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling. University of California Press, 1996. Recognition: Alpha Sigma Nu National Jesuit Book Award in Literature for 1996-1998; Kenneth Kingery Scholarly Book Award, Council for Wisconsin Writers.
- Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1975, two volumes, Library of America, 1998 (co-editor). One-volume paperback edition with Foreword, 2000.
    
Honors/Awards
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Huntington Library Summer Research Fellowships (1978, 1979)
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American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships (1980, 1986-1987)
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (1985)
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Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1989-1990)
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Fulbright Distinguished Lectureship, Beijing Foreign Studies University (2000)
- Fulbright Senior Lectureship, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2006)
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