Caleb Agnew
Office Hours: By appointment.
Class Schedule: Ethical Engagement (EGMT 1540 sections 110/112/114)
Degrees
MA, English, University of Virginia (2016)
BA, English, UNC-Chapel Hill (2013)
Dissertation: "Swerve into Shape: The Stanza in Postwar Anglophone Poetry"
My dissertation explores stanzaic structure in the later twentieth century to complicate critical accounts of contemporary versification and the historicity of poetic form, intervening in discussions of formalist studies, twentieth-century Anglophone poetry, modern prosody, and historical poetics. In chapters focusing on W. H. Auden, Derek Walcott, and Jorie Graham, I examine the ways these poets modify traditional stanzaic structures, both negotiating the historical responsiveness of prosodic technique and marking differential engagements with various forms and discourses around their respective thematic interests in memorability, tourism, and embodiment.
Fellowships
2018-2019 Junior Fellow, University of Virginia Society of Fellows
2018-2019 Dean's Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Publications
2016 “The Refrains of Kashmir: Agha Shahid Ali’s Canzones and the Forms of Exile.”Arcade Colloquy: Locating Contemporary Asian American Poetry. Edited by Brian Reed and Cornelia Freitag. Stanford University. Web.
Conferences
2019 Panel Organizer, “Race and Versification in Anglophone Poetry”; Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, March 21-24, Washington, D.C.
2017 “Terrible Gush Gash of Form of Outwardness: Visualizing Jorie Graham’s Stanzaic Poetics”; Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association Conference
2017 “Rippling Over the Accumulations: Collecting the Surfaces of Jorie Graham”; UVA Graduate English Student Association Conference
2017 “Don’t Touch Me: Forms of Reading in Jorie Graham’s “Noli me Tangere””; Formalism and Its Discontents, Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis
2016 “Does the Big Group Weep Metrical Tears?: The Problem of Virtuosity in Public Elegies by Yeats and Auden”; UVA Graduate English Student Association Conference
2015 “Phony Infinitude of the Self: Terrance Hayes’s Textualized Blues Monologues”; South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference
2015 “The Refrains of Kashmir: Agha Shahid Ali’s Canzones and the Forms of Exile”; Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association Conference
Teaching:
ENWR 1510 - Writing and Critical Inquiry ("Writing About Myth"; "Music vs. Poetry")
ENRN 3210 - Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies (TA)
ENGL 3820 - History of Literatures in English II (TA)
ENLT 2548 - Contemporary Literature ("Whose Lyric Is It Anyway?")
EGMT 1540 - Ethical Engagement (TA)
Research Interests: Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Anglophone Poetry & Poetics, Poetic Form and Genre, Prosody and Versification