Education
B.A., Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Courses Taught
Some recent courses: WRIT 100: The Rhetoric of Surveillance Culture ENGL 205: Creative Writing on Two Wheels ENGL 262: Realist Ink and Ashcan Paint ENGL 190: No Dogs Allowed: Literary Animals WRIT 200: Photo/Text: Multimodal Composition
Research Interests
History and theory of the novel, Rhetoric and Visual Culture, Creative and Expository Writing, Cultural History of Bicycling
Publications
Sample Publications:
“Picture This: Cross-Disciplinary Travel in Cuzco, Peru” (co-authored with Kyle Quave). Faculty as Global Learners: Opportunities and Strategies to Support Off-Campus Study Leaders. Eds. Joan Gillespie, Lisa Jasinski, and Dana Gross. Lever Press (forthcoming).
“Curating Chaos,” Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice. Eds. Bridget Draxler and Danielle Spratt. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2018. (pp. 118-119)
“Photographing the Painted Landscape: Photo-ekphrasis in The Rise of Silas Lapham,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 39.3 (July 2017): 213-233.
“The Coincidence of Historical Fiction: ‘Code-Orange’ Reading After 9/11.” Radical Planes: Refiguring Crisis and Continuity in Post-9/11 Literature. Eds. Birgit Dawes and Dunja Mohr. AmsterdamLeiden: Brill Rodopi, 2016. (pp. 38-55)
“Map My Ride: Scaling Frank Norris’s The Octopus by Bicycle,” Studies in American Naturalism 9.2 (Winter 2014): 173-197.
“A Florentine Great, No Lines: The Bartali Museum,” The Florentine. May 8, 2014. http://www.theflorentine.net/lifestyle/2014/05/a-florentine-great-no-lines/
“Real Planes and Imaginary Towers: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America as 9/11 Prosthesis,” Literature After 9/11. Eds. Keniston and Quinn. Routledge, New York, 2008. (pp. 246-260)
“Babbled Slander Where the Paler Shades Dwell: Reading Race in The Great Gatsby and Passing,” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 18.2 (April-June 2007): 173-191.
“Desire and Indifference in Sister Carrie: Neoclassical Economic Anticipations,” Dreiser Studies. 29.1-2 (Spring/Fall 1998): 18-33.
“Topographies of Computer Access Outside the Composition Classroom,” Computers and Composition: An International Journal for Teachers of Writing 14.2 (1997): 269-278. (With Thomas Reynolds). (Special Issue national award winner at Composition and Computers Conference.)
“The Ironic Romance of New Historicism: The Scarlet Letter and Beloved Standing In Side by Side,” Arizona Quarterly 51.1 (Spring 1995): 33-60.
“An Interview with Robert Stone,” Salmagundi 108 (Fall 1995): 119-139. (With David Pink).
A Coincidence of Wants: The Novel and Neoclassical Economics. New York: Garland, 2000.
Chuck Lewis
Professor of English
Director of the Writing Program
Email: lewisc@beloit.edu
Phone: 608-363-2065
Office: 1st Floor, Writing Center
I teach courses in writing and literature, and I direct Beloit College’s Writing Program. Most of my published scholarship focuses on the American novel from the late 19th century to the contemporary period. My teaching interests also include interdisciplinary approaches to literature, creative writing, and other modes of communication such as photography.
I enjoy the discoveries of reading and writing with my students–what we find there, how and what we learn about each other, and the skills and habits of mind that we develop together. I value the opportunity to work with students from their first semester on campus to their senior capstone writing–in class, on individual projects, and even taking our writing practice off campus, from bicycling the backroads beyond Beloit to travel writing in places like Cuzco, Peru and Florence, Italy.