Jake Mattox

Jake Mattox, Associate Professor of English

Contact Information

Office Location: Wiekamp Hall, Room DW3146
Office Phone: (574) 520-4408
E-mail: jdmattox@iu.edu

Education:

Ph.D. Literature (University of California, San Diego, 2007)
M.A. Literature (University of California, San Diego, 2003)
B.A. English (Pitzer College [Claremont Colleges], 1992)

Background

I teach a variety of periods of U.S. literature—mostly pre-1900. I’m invested in teaching U.S. literary production as a multicultural endeavor, but that goes beyond simply an appreciation of different cultures and groups. It also means considering “literature” broadly speaking as a terrain on which social and political struggle is waged. In my research, one project I’ve been particularly interested in lately has to do with the representations put forth by both Mexican and U.S. participants at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. I have spent some time in archives in Mexico and Chicago and found some wonderful materials. Also, I’m revising a piece on Melville and his engagement with American empire.

Selected Publications

"'Toward a Critical Historicism." Currently under revision.

"'The deeply marked chart of Ahab’s forehead': Oceanography, Antebellum Expansion, and the Fictions of the Nation Frame." Currently under revision.

Review of Ethnology and Empire: Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands, by Robert Lawrence Gunn, and Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation, by Vicente L.
Rafael, American Literature 90.1 (March 2018): 171–173.

"'All you needed was Godzilla behind them': Situating (Racial) Knowledge and Teaching Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992." Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies 1.2 (2014): 221–231.

"Claiming Panama: Genre and Gender in U.S. Isthmiana, 1840–1857." American Studies 53.1 (2014): 117-147.

Review of "The Specter of Conspiracy in Martin Delany’s Blake," by Rebecca Skidmore Biggio, Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (June 2011)

Review of Wolfson Press’s 2009 archival recovery edition of The Negro in South Bend (1922), by Buford Gordon, Indiana Magazine of History 106.4 (December 2010): 401–403

Courses Recently Taught at IU South Bend

ENG-L 202 Literary Interpretation
ENG-L 352 U.S. Literature 1865–1915
ENG-L 351 U.S. Literature 1800–1865
ENG-L 350U.S. Literature to 1800
ENG-L 501 Professional Scholarship in Literature
ENG-L 653 Optimism and Fear in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Culture
ENG-L 680 New Historicism, Critical Pedagogy, and U.S. Literature
ENG-T 190 Literary and Intellectual Traditions: The Purposes and Potential of Education in the United States
ENG-T 390 Conquest, “Progress,” and the U.S. West
ENG-L 501 Professional Scholarship in Literature
First-year Writing

Honors and Awards

Member, Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET)
IU South Bend Trustees’ Teaching Award
Nominee, Educator of the Year, IU South Bend SGA

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