Welcome to my professional blog, which also serves as my website. Here you will find samples of my academic writing and teaching materials.
I hold a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 19th and early 20th Century American literature. The focus of my research is on the representation of veterans in the post-Civil War era and how that experience created our conception of what it means to be a veteran today. This is the subject of my book New Men: Reconstructing the Image of the Veteran in Late Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture published in 2015 by Fordham University Press.
In addition to my research on veterans, I am currently working on a book length project on agriculture and the representation of family farmers in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States. I am also working on an article exploring inter-generational conflict in contemporary Native American fiction.
I teach courses in introductory level literature and writing as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I have also taught gateway courses for English Majors and Minors such as introduction to literary criticism and theory and a survey of American literature from the Early Republic to the First World War.
My university service commitments include working as Assistant Director of English Undergraduate Studies where I was responsible for advising, career counseling, and special projects designed to recruit and retain English Majors. I have also served as an Assistant Director in the First Year Writing Program where I helped manage a self-assessment of our program and plans for the future direction of our writing curriculum. Additionally, I served for a little over a month as Interim Program Coordinator for Graduate Studies.
My service to the discipline includes a position as the Anglophone/American Literature Director for the Northeast Modern Language Association from 2015-2018 where I selected and promoted panels for the annual convention, read manuscripts for organization awards, and assisted in selecting fellowship applicants. I have also served as a reviewer for numerous academic journals including American Literary History, Civil War History, The Journal of Southern History, and Studies in American Fiction.
If you’d like more information about me or my work, please refer to the CV section of my site or use the contact form below.
John A Casey Jr 