Joseph’s research cites regional relevance in global community
American Literary Regionalism in a Global Age by Philip Joseph, assistant professor in the Department of English, promises to be a significant contribution to American literature scholarship. The book, to be released in December at colleges and universities throughout the country, examines how regional literature can remain relevant in a global community. Joseph asks how regionalist fiction can survive in an age of expanding international communications and increasing non-local affiliations. To do so, Joseph places the regionalist tradition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries at the center of a contemporary conversation about community.
The research and publication of the book is one of many activities that earned Joseph the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Excellence in Research and Creative Activities honor for 2006.
“Dr. Joseph focuses on the relationship between the civic and the aesthetic,” writes Nancy Ciccone, chair of the Department of English. “His academic work extends beyond the university to the community.”
In addition to his publications, which include three articles published between 1998 and 2002 in top-tier journals, Joseph helped organize the Denver conference Culture_Commerce_Community—or C3—in May 2005. With leaders from the Denver Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Film, the Colorado Council on the Arts, the Lab at Belmar and the Colorado Business Committee on the Arts, Joseph brought together leading thinkers and practitioners to explore how arts and culture contribute to the state’s economy and civic communities. More than 500 people attended the conference.
Building on his previous work, Joseph is currently writing an article on the figure of the “dead letter” in Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. The article expands on a paper he delivered at the 2005 symposium of CU-Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts.
“Professor Joseph is an exemplar of the ‘scholar-teacher’ advocated by the Department of English,” writes colleague Cynthia Wong, assistant professor in the department. “He is able to communicate his research work to his students and to bring its significance to the wider reaches of the community.”