Summary
Ann Keniston is the director of undergraduate studies and a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, with a specialty in American poetry.
She is the author of two monographs, Ghostly Figures: Memory and Belatedness in Postwar American Poetry (Iowa, 2015), the 2016 winner of the Warren-Brooks Award and Overheard Voices: Address and Subjectivity in Postmodern American Poetry (Routledge, 2006). She has also published a poetry chapbook, November Wasps: Elegies (Finishing Line, 2013) and a collection of poems, The Caution of Human Gestures (David Robert Books, 2005), as well as many poems in journals, including, recently, Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, and Literary Imagination.
Keniston has co-edited three volumes: Literature after 9/11 (Routledge, 2008, with Jeanne Follansbee Quinn), The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology (McFarland, 2012, with Jeffrey Gray), and The News from Poems: Essays on the 21st-century American Poetry of Engagement (Michigan, Fall 2016, with Jeffrey Gray).
Twice a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize, she has received artist's grants from the Nevada Arts Council, the Sierra Arts Foundation and the Somerville Arts Council in Massachusetts. She recently has completed a new collection of poems and is at work on a new monograph tentatively entitled "Economies of Scale: Capitalism and Containment in 21st-Century American Poetry" and a new poetry collection tentatively entitled "Uoriginal."
She lives in Reno, Nevada.
Research interests
- History and theory of poetry
- 20th and 21st century poetry
- Contemporary American literature
- Gender in literature and theory
- Lyric theory
- Psychoanalysis and literature
- Creative writing (poetry)
- Literature and public engagement
- Ethics
Courses taught
- Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop
- American Literature and Culture
- American Poetry
- American Poetry 1865-1945
- American Poetry 1945-Present
- American Women Poets (graduate seminar)
- Contemporary American Literature
- Contemporary American Poetry (graduate seminar)
- Core Humanities: American Experience and Constitutional Change (honors)
- Craft of Poetry (graduate seminar)
- Ethics and/as Engagement in 21st-century American Literature (graduate seminar)
- Expository Writing: Style and Argument
- Haunting and Memory in Contemporary American Literature (graduate seminar)
- Honors Composition
- Nonhuman, Posthuman, Inhuman (graduate seminar)
- Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (graduate seminar)
- Modern British and American Poetry
- Postmodern American Literature (graduate seminar)
- Space and Place in Recent British and American Fiction (graduate seminar)
- Women in Literature
- Writing about Literature
Publications
Single-authored books
- Ghostly Figures: Memory and Belatedness in Postwar American Poetry. Contemporary North American Poetry Series. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2015. Recipient of Robert Penn Warren - Cleanth Brooks Award (2016).
- November Wasps: Elegies. Poetry chapbook. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line, 2013.
- Overheard Voices: Subjectivity and Address in Postmodern American Poetry. New York: Routledge Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory Series, 2006. Paper 2015.
- The Caution of Human Gestures: Poems. Cincinnati: David Robert Books, 2005.
Edited collections
- The News from Poems: New Essays on 21st-century American Engaged Poetry. Co-edited essay collection (with Jeffrey Gray), including 12 essays plus a cowritten introduction. Ann Arbor, MI: U. of Michigan P, 2016. (in press)
- The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st-Century Anthology. Anthology co-edited with Jeffrey Gray. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.
- Literature after 9/11. Essay collection co-edited with Jeanne Follansbee Quinn. New York: Routledge, 2008. Paper 2010.
Education
- Ph.D., English Literature, Boston University, 2002
- M.A., English with a concentration in creative writing, New York University, 1991
- B.A. with general honors, English, University of Chicago, 1983