Associate
Professor
My area of specialization is American poetry: reading it, interpreting it, and writing it. I like to locate poems in their concrete cultural contexts; for instance, one recent article examines Raymond Carver's poetry and the nineteenth-century popular "temperance" tradition.
My current research project is a literary history tentatively titled Rank Amateurs: American Poetry at the Margins, 1820-1920. I've also published one collection of poems, Distance Learning (1998); a new book of poems, Bird Skin Coat, is forthcoming in 2009.
In addition to my areas of specialization, I also teach courses on Transcendentalism, the Gilded Age, and the Beats of the 1950s.
Teaching Fields
- American Literature
- Creative Writing (Poetry)
Office
Location & Contact
- Coughlin Hall, 331
- (414) 288-7263
- angela.sorby@marquette.edu
Office
Hours
- FALL 2008
- 032/1004 MW 2:15-3:40
- 191/1701 W 5:45-8:20 PM
Teaching
Schedule
- FALL 2008
- M 12:00-2:00
- W 3:45-4:45
Research Interests
- American Poetry
- Popular Culture
- Children's Literature
Selected Publications
- Distance Learning, New Issues Press, 1998
- Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865-1917. UPNE, 2005.
- “Message in a Bottle: The 2007 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children’s
Poetry.” With Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas. The Lion and the Unicorn 31 (2007): 264-281.
- "Approaches to Teaching the Schoolroom Poets." Approaches to Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. Eds. Paula Bennett and Karen Kilcup. NY: Modern Language Association Press, 2007: 93-105.
- “What Helen Caught.” Third Coast (Spring 2007): 130-131.
- “Symmetrical Womanhood: Poetry in the Woman’s Building Library.” Libraries
and Culture 41: 1 (Winter 2006): 5-34.
- “Performing Class: James Whitcomb Riley’s Poetry of Distinction.” MLQ: A Journal of Literary History 60:2 (June 1999): 197-222.
- “St. Nicholas Magazine and the Poetics of Peer Culture, 1872-1900.” American Studies 39:1 (Spring 1998) 59-74.
- Published Poems
Honors/Awards
• Brittingham Prize for poetry manuscript Bird Skin Coat, 2008.
• Honor Book Prize, Children’s Literature Association, 2007
• Summer Faculty Fellowship, Marquette University, 2006.
• Schlesinger Library Fellowship, Harvard University, 2005.
• Vivian Pollak Scholar-in-Amherst Award, Emily Dickinson International
Society, 2003
• Urban Studies Institute Course Development Grant, Marquette University,
2003.
• Summer Faculty Fellowship, Marquette University, 2002.
• Korzenik Fellowship, Longfellow Friends, 2002.
• Marquette University PT-3 Grant, 2001.
• Linfield College Faculty Fellowship, 1998.
• Stuart Tave Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1996.
• Discovery/The Nation (writing) Prize, The Nation and the Poetry Center of
the 92nd Street “Y,” 1994.
• Brauer Grant, “Educating Emily Dickinson,” University of Chicago, 1994.
• John Fiske Poetry (writing) Prize, University of Chicago, 1993.
