About

Trained in 20th-centure American Lit with forays into 18th-C Brits, psychological approaches, poetics, and lit theory (decon., hermeneutics, and Frankfurt-school critical studies), I’ve evolved toward ecocriticism with a perspective I’m calling biopragmatism. Concerned to develop a robust poetics for the present century (and the long haul) I work the intersection of several disciplines and ideas: cognitive studies, especially linguistics; ecology, evolution, and other environmental models and disciplines; the canonical American pragmatists (especially Peirce and Dewey) and their present-day interpreters, and contemplative discipline (e.g. Zen). I think this nexus of theory and praxis offers us a better framework for studying art and culture, and a much better rhetorical presence as a discipline among other disciplines, than poststructuralism and/or the cultural studies hegemony presently do.

I also write poems.