Personal and Professional Bio
I spent a classic Canadian boyhood on the Prairies in the 1960s. Since then I have lived on two Canadian coasts and several spots in the middle, before settling in reportedly the happiest city in Canada. Kingston, Ontario has been home since arriving here in 1989 to pursue graduate studies in English at Queen's. We have raised our five children here and put down solid roots through cracks in the limestone.
I am a proud Canadian, which adds to the paradox that my research and teaching interests are largely in American literature and popular culture: career-long work on the fictions and influence of Flannery O'Connor, of late, on pop musicians and singer-songwriters, mainly of the Americana genre. My scholarly journey began in the late 1970s when I attended the University of Victoria to study creative writing with some notable Canadian writers and followed on to an MA in Modern British Literature, writing a thesis on the "supernatural thrillers" of novelist and poet and writer of potboilers, Charles Williams (friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien). Compelled by an interest in the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, which I discovered while working on my MA, I completed a PhD in American literature at Queen's in 1994 with a dissertation entitled The Word Made Fiction: The Stories of Flannery O'Connor, and had a busy career as an adjunct at both Queen's and the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) until I was granted a permanent position at the College in 2002. I was promoted to Full Professor in 2020.
I have developed two credit courses for RMC Online—ENE101: Introduction to Literary Studies: Fiction, and ENE150: University Writing Skills—as well as an online interactive handbook of writing tailored for members of the Canadian Armed Forces, A Military Writer's Handbook. For 13 years I was the DCS Professor-in-Charge in the Department of English.
When I am not teaching or working on scholarly stuff, I occasionally sing and play guitar and an Appalachian dulcimer at a farmers' market or coffee shop or long-term care facility. I enjoy canoe camping, angling when the fish and not the flies are biting, journaling in a clean, well-lighted place, and, several times a day, a cup of premium dark roast coffee served in a porcelain cupping bowl. I’ll admit it: privileged and particular.
Specialization(s) and Scholarly interests:
Flannery O'Connor, Bruce Springsteen, spirituality and literature, the song lyric as literature.
Co-founder and co-editor of BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies.
Current Research or Projects:
A monograph is in press with UP Mississippi titled Flannery at the Grammys that explores O'Connor's extensive influence on a suite of celebrated contemporary singer-songwriters and pop music groups, including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Sufjan Stevens, Mary Gauthier, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, R.E.M., and U2. A further, expansive chapter includes short pieces that examine O'Connor's influence on more than twenty other recording artists and bands—from punk to heavy metal to synth-pop. The book is slated for release on 15 July 2024.
Selected Publications:
- "O'Connor in Popular Music," in MLA Approaches to Teaching the Works of Flannery O 'Connor, edited by Bruce Gentry and Robert Donahoo. MLA, September 2019, 183-193.
- "Born to Write: Bruce Springsteen, Flannery O'Connor, and the Songstory," in Long Walk Home, edited by Jonathan Cohen and June Skinner Sawyers (a festschrift to honour the occasion of Bruce Springsteen's 70th birthday), Rutgers UP, September 2019, 135-142.
- "'The Welsh Springsteen': An Interview with Martyn Joseph," in in Long Walk Home, 119-127.
- "Nick Cave, Flannery O'Connor, and the Embodied Sacred." Flannery O 'Connor Review 17 (August 2019): 147-164.
- "Flannery O'Connor: Critical Reception." Critical Insights: Flannery O'Connor, edited by Charles E. May. Salem Press, 2011, 77-109.
- Co-editor with Roxanne Harde (U of Alberta-Augustana), Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen, Lexington Press, August 2010. [This work has become a scholarly best seller, with sales surpassing 1000 copies.]
- Co-editor with R. Neil Scott (Tennessee Middle State U), Flannery O'Connor: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge University Press, 2009. [Volume 16 in the American Critical Archives series.]
- "The Ghost of Flannery O'Connor in the Songs of Bruce Springsteen." Flannery O'Connor Review 6 (2008): 11-29.
- "The Semiotics of Time and Place and Eternity in Two Stories by Flannery O'Connor," in The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic. Ed. Deborah Bowen. Newcastle UK: Cambridge Scholar's Press, 2007, 238-252.
- A Military Writer's Handbook. CD-ROM. Edited by Dr. Christine Hamelin; html programming and design by Michael Lortie. Published by the Royal Military College of Canada, January 2006.
- Editor, Flannery O'Connor: A Reference Guide to Criticism, compiled and written by R. Neil Scott and published by Timberlane Publishing, Milledgeville, Georgia, 2002. Winner of a Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" award.
Honours and Awards:
- Principal’s Coin for Service to the College, 30 May 2022.
- Class of 1965 Teaching Excellence Award, co-winner with Annie Riel, 2021.
- The Colonel the Honourable John Matheson Academic Leadership Award, 18 November 2016.
- Commandant's Commendation for Service to the College, 10 December 2014.
- Recipient of a Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" award for Flannery O 'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism, January 2003. Compiled and written by R. Neil Scott, edited by Irwin H. Streight.
Teaching Philosophy:
I have grounded my teaching philosophy in an idea expressed by Parker Palmer in To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (Harper 1983) that "to teach is to create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced." In my classes and seminars I try to create a space in which students feel comfortable, known and accepted, part of a learning community. The critical reading and thinking skills that literary study develops enable students to explore claims of truth on their lives as they are articulated and/or incarnated in imaginative literature. Literature engages the whole person—mind and spirit and social being. However 19th-century the notion may be to some, I believe strongly in the idea of applied literature: we read to discover what and how we think of ourselves and others and the often mysterious world around us; and what and how we read affects who we are and what we do—our worth, our work, our sense of wonder. The word in the poem, story, novel, play has the power to move the heart and to change consciousness. And so I enter the teaching space humbly, sometimes anxiously, always expectantly.
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare,
life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed? — Annie Dillard
Courses Taught:
- ENE100/110: Introduction to Literary Studies and University Writing Skills
- ENE361: American Literature: Visions and Voices
- ENE363: American Literature: The American Dream
- ENE375: Literature and Spirituality
Humanitarian Interests:
Below are links to a suite of humanitarian projects in Kenya that I am involved with: