• NMSU
• English Department
• Faculty
• Ryan Cull

Teaching/Research Interests:

• modern and contemporary American poetry
• American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present
• critical theory (especially: theories of sociality and the border between subjectivity and sociality; eco-theory)
• pragmatism

Selected and/or Recent Publications:

"'We fathom you not – we love you': Walt Whitman's Social Ontology and Radical Democracy," forthcoming in Criticism

"Interrogating the 'Egotistical Sublime': Keats and Dickinson Near the Dawn of Lyricization?" forthcoming in The Emily Dickinson Journal     

"Beyond the Cheated Eye: Dickinson's Lyric Sociality." Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.1 (2010): 38-64. Print.

"'Complexities Which Will Remain Complexities': The Environmentalist Epistemology of Marianne Moore's 'An Octopus.'" Paideuma. 33.2,3 (2004): 3-27. Print.

Reprint of "The Betrayal of Pragmatism?: Rorty's Quarrel with James." Pragmatism. Ed. Alan Malachowski. Vol. 3. London: Sage Publications, 2004: 195-204. Print

"The Betrayal of Pragmatism?: Rorty's Quarrel with James." Philosophy and Literature. 24.1 (2000): 83-95. Print.

      
Work in Progress:
'Beyond the Cheated Eye':  Modern American Poetry and the Perils of Post-Romantic Subjectivity (book manuscript)

Professional Statement:
Whether the focus of a class is broad or narrow, for freshman or for graduates, my hope is to establish a mutual trust between teacher and student.  This trust is built by communicating, whether in leading discussions or commenting on papers, that though I am here to teach texts I have read multiple times, I am also eager to continue to learn alongside students who approach these texts for the first time. After all, if I want students to risk rethinking their preconceptions, then so should I. This makes it possible to establish lines of inquiry that encourage students not only to appreciate the art of literature but to feel comfortable enough to explore how they are implicated by its history and discursive practices.  And it is this difficult reflection about self and culture that generates both great research in the classroom and an enriching sense of literature's relevance in the wider world.